Laughter is based on reenactments of an old photograph entitled “Laughter – at the roof garden of Tobu building in Tokyo” (1956) – a photo of a group of five people laughing uncontrollably. The project investigates what was so funny at the moment of the capture. No one in the picture remembers and the photographer (Kenji Omori) does not want to speak about the past. The text is based on a five year long letter exchange between the owner of the original photograph and the artist, from 2010-2014. During the years of the letter exchange, the artist has restaged Laughter with different groups where the artist belongs, such as friends, colleagues, students and family. Book layout by designer, artist and curator Mikkeline Daa Natorp from the exhibition phenomena Piscine. Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen and Mikkeline Daa Natorp will both be present at the book launch to introduce the publication. Laughter is on display right now at the International Photo Festival in Portugal Encontros da Imagem with the theme ‘happiness’. Laughter is Ditte Lyngkær Pedersen’s second book publication. In 2013 her artist book ‘Why is Green a Red Word?’ was published by Art Laboratory Berlin and later this year she will publish her third book ‘Vagina Eating Husband’ in connection with an exhibition at Chiaki Contemporary in Cyprus.
The book was produced with support from The City of Aarhus
www.dittelyngkaerpedersen.com
Mette Sandbye is professor for photography studies at the University of Copenhagen. She currently researches the relationship between amateur photography and collective history since the 1960s. She was the editor of the first Danish history of photography (Dansk Fotografihistorie, 2004), and has published numerous books and articles on contemporary art photography and photography as part of visual culture.
Markus Schaden is a bookseller and self-proclaimed photobook evangelist. In 1998, he founded the Cologne-based photographic publishing house Schaden.com, one of the first publishers to be available online. He has published over a hundred photobooks and has participated in a number of international fairs. He has curated various exhibitions and is a member of the editorial board of Foam Magazine and a guest editor of the second edition of the PhotoBook Review, published by Aperture (New York). In 2012 he founded The PhotoBookMuseum, which has organised a number of exhibitions of photobooks and is now looking for a permanent space.
Journal is a Swedish publishing house specialising in photobooks, operated by editor and designer Gösta Flemming. Since its founding in 1991, more than a hundred titles have been released. He is most well known for the work done with Scandinavian photographers like JH Engström, Anders Petersen and Nina Korhonen.
Åse Eg Jørgensen graduated from the Danish Design School in 1989. She works as an artist and graphic designer and has for 30 years been co-editor on Pist Protta, Danish art-periodical. Åse’s practice spans all kinds of printed matter, very fond of paper, colours and books. She is based in Copenhagen and is the owner of Åse Eg Aps.
Eloi Gimeno graduated in Design in Barcelona by ELISAVA and in Helsinki by TAIK, specialized in typography, corporate identities and editorial design. He is responsible for some of the most famous contemporary Spanish photobooks, such as Antonio Xoubanova’s Casa de Campo and Óscar Monzón’s KARMA. In his work, “the book ends up being the result of a long process with the artist. I mainly help to put things in order, tame the beast and exalt the experience; since I am usually the first spectator of the work”.
The Irish artist Miriam O’Connor lives and works in Cork. In her practice she draws inspiration from the language, sights and sounds of everyday life. In January 2012, PogoBooks, Berlin and Galleri Image published her first photo book Attention Seekers. Also in conjunction with Galleri Image, she has recently produced new work for FRESH EYES – International artists rethink Aarhus, which will be exhibited during Aarhus Capital of Culture, 2017.
Moritz Neumüller has worked for institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and La Fábrica in Madrid, and currently directs the Photography Department of IED Madrid. He is a regular contributor to European Photography Magazine (Berlin) and on the editorial board of the encyclopaedia project The European History of Photography (Bratislava). Furthermore, he runs an online resource for visual artists, called The Curator Ship, and is chief curator of the Photobookweek Aarhus.
Yining He is a graduate of the London College of Communication with a MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography. She is an independent writer and curator, and founder of Go East Project, which aims at introducing contemporary Chinese photography to the West. Since 2010 she has been a regular contributor to many art and photography publications including Chinese Photography, The Modern Weekly, Rayarts Center, Art World, ArtForum China among many others.
Beate Cegielska is the director of Galleri Image and has curated numerous group and solo exhibitions by Danish and international artists and organised exhibitions in Europe, South Korea, China and India. Galleri Image is a non-commercial exhibition space aiming at spreading knowledge of high quality photo-based art by showing Danish as well as international art photography and video art. Founded in Aarhus in 1977, the gallery is the oldest non-profit exhibition space for photographic art in Scandinavia. In fact, for many years it was the only photo art gallery in Denmark.
Jesper Rasmussen is an artist, educator and writer in visual culture. He was a member of the Solkorset group of artists, of which he was also a co-founder, and his work is represented in several Danish museums, including ARoS, Arken and Statens Museum for Kunst. Since 1981, alongside his work as an artist, Rasmussen has published the journal Pist Protta in collaboration with Åse Eg Jørgensen and Jesper Fabricius. The journal experiments with the form, content, layout and expression of each new issue.
Thomas Wiegand is a collector and writer specialized in photobooks. His „Deutschland im Fotobuch“, published 2011 by Steidl, is an attempt to reflect the image of a country based on a carefully selected choice of the huge amount of photobooks published since the First World War. The book is designed as an exhibition between covers. He is currently working on a book about the photo books produced in the former GDR (DDR).
Anne Elisabeth Toft, Architect, PhD specialises in architectural photography. She has participated in group and solo exhibitions on architecture and architectural photography in Denmark and abroad. She has curated exhibitions on architecture and photography, and she has written extensively about architecture, architectural education, architectural photography, and the visual arts. Her most recent book is: Questions of Representations in Architecture (2015). Toft is a member of The European Society for the History of Photography and the Jury of the Danish Society of Artists. Since 2015 she is President of the Nordic Association of Architectural Research (NAF).
Klaus Gjørup is a Danish publisher and founder of Forlaget Wunderbuch, a publishing house dedicated to books that speak to all senses, make curious, inspire the lingering thinking and encourage the repetitive reading. The genres vary between philosophy, poetry, fiction and art books. Renowned for his uncompromising and innovative work, Gjørup received the Albertsen Fondens Pris in 2016.
Stig Lennart Andersson is a Danish architect, founding partner at SLA and Professor in Aesthetic Design at the University of Copenhagen. Renowned for his sensuous and poetic work, Andersson combines unique amenity values based on the aesthetics of nature with cutting edge nature-based urban design. He has received numerous national and international awards, including the European Landscape Award, the RIBA European Award, Nykredit’s Architecture Prize and in 2014 the C.F. Hansen Medal – the highest national honour given to a Danish architect.
Claus Peder Pedersen is an architect that works as a researcher, educator and occasional practitioner. He was educated at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, and has a PhD. in architecture from the the Aarhus School of Architecture, where he is head of research and holds a position as associate professor at the Institute of Architecture. He was a founding partner in the architectural office TRANSFORM and is currently partner in the cross disciplinary practice Blankspace.
Lars Rolfsted Mortensen is an architect and photographer based in Copenhagen. His photographic works are indebted to the New Topographics and revolves around urban transformation, infrastructure and the notion of multiple modernities as witnessed in the geographically diverse trajectories of present-day urban development. He is currently finishing his Ph.D. at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture.
José Luís Neves is a PhD researcher in Art & Design at the University of Ulster. Between 2010 and 2012 he worked at the Wilson Centre for Photography in London as a cataloguer and assistant curator. His main areas of research include the history and historiography of the photobook, photobook and materiality, visual narrative and artist’s book history and theory. His current research work focuses on understanding the historical and critical development of the photobook and the intersections between the latter form and the artist’s book.
Jesper Rasmussen is an artist, educator and writer in visual culture. He was a member of the Solkorset group of artists, of which he was also a co-founder, and his work is represented in several Danish museums, including ARoS, Arken and Statens Museum for Kunst. Since 1981, alongside his work as an artist, Rasmussen has published the journal Pist Protta in collaboration with Åse Eg Jørgensen and Jesper Fabricius. The journal experiments with the form, content, layout and expression of each new issue.
Lars Kiel Bertelsen is a professor of the Department of Aesthetics and Communication and Art History at Aarhus University. He is a designer and editor, and founding member of the Aarhus Photobook Club. His publications include Symbolic Imprints: Essays on Photography (1998) and Visual Culture and Interface: Digital kunst og kultur (2007).
