The title is an excellent addition to the photobook genre and who would have thought that such a rich collection of company printed matter from 1890 to 1987 was available. Thanks to author Bart Sorgedrager who wisely collected company photobooks and 175 are shown on these pages.
These are, of course, basically company PR but because cost wasn't a primary consideration for publication there are some very extravagant productions: the French Geo Foucault & Schweitzer, a meat company, in the 1920s, published a 312-page paperback, the Swiss fabric company Heberlein took 160 pages to show off their wares, in 1959 the Dutch Plem electronic company produced 146-page hardback. These are the exceptions because most of the publications are less than fifty pages and those published before 1940 usually used black and white photos but frequently with a second color.
I was surprised to come across publications that went the extra mile, for example, five companies published 3D titles (including the glasses). Dutch chocolate company Van Nelle issued, in 1931, a shot of their factory as a hundred-piece jigsaw, as did Lips, also Dutch, with an aerial factory shot in a 120-piece jigsaw. Karl Krause, a German company celebrated the 100,000 production of bookbinding machinery with a folder containing sixteen postcards showing the interior of their factories.
These company publications are full of photos, usually by unknown photographers but famous names do show up. Margaret Bourke-White took the shots for the seventy-four-page book titled Newsprint for International Paper in 1939, Lee Friedlander worked for Cray Computers in 1987. Designer/photographer Piet Zwart was responsible for several publications shown in the book.
Overall I thought was a fascinating look at the relatively obscure company photobook, obscure because none of these titles were sold to the public. The 506 pages are nicely designed though I would have preferred less white page space and bigger spreads from the books. Manfred Heiting's photobook series published by Steidl (Soviet, Japanese, Dutch, Czech & Slovak) shows how it can be done and still look beautifully designed.
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