Michael Ruetz

With The Family of Dog, Michael Ruetz has implemented a unique photographic series in the last fifty years which at the same time presents a subtle and enlightening depiction of people and their social behaviour. Dogs, after all, are what we want to see in them and what we make of them. In the rarest case, a dog is simply an animal. Michael Ruetz photographed dogs on the street, at homes, on the beach or in front of the TV, which usually makes them fall asleep. He depicts them alone, with cats and cows and again and again as man's companion. Ruetz avoids any mise-en-sc�ne and imposing himself on the animals. Occasional provocative payoffs result from patient observation. As man in his daily routine, dogs slide into odd situations all the time. In this sincere and nevertheless ironic book, Michael Ruetz shows the various forms of canine existence, a com�die canine, in life as in death. Michael Ruetz was born in Berlin in 1940. He studied Sinology, Japanese and journalism and lived abroad for thirteen years. From 1969 to 1973, he was a staff photographer for the weekly magazine Stern. Since then he has worked solely as a freelance photographer and as a contract writer and photographer with Little Brown and Company/New York Graphic Society. Ruetz is a professor for communication design at the Hochschule f�r Bildende K�nste in Braunschweig, Germany, and is a member of the Akademie der K�nste, Berlin. He was appointed Officier des Arts et Lettres in 2006. With Steidl he has published Sichtbare Zeit, Das Willy-Brandt-Haus, Bibliothek der Augen, Cosmos, WindAuge, Eye on Time, Die unbequeme Zeit and Eye on Infinity.

The Family of Dog

Klaus Honnef

Heinz Hajek-Halke

This large-format monograph is the first extensive review of the work of Heinz Hajek-Halke, an unrecognized pioneer of early twentieth-century experimental photography. Hajek-Halke surmounted the purely documentary nature of the medium in the turbulent 1920s to develop a variety of aesthetically challenging photo-manipulation and montage techniques. He used these methods not only in excellent compositions made for their own sake, but also in commissioned advertising work, which can now be understood as innovative forerunners of today's altered photography and web design. "Artist, Anarchist" encompasses all the creative phases of Hajek-Halke's career--his nude photography, his photo-montages, picture stories, the images of small animals with which he kept his nose down during the war, and his late abstract Lichtgrafiken, or light graphics. Reproductions of his vintage prints and an abundance of other material, including photo collages, magazine advertisements, dust jackets for books and graphic designs make this a rich introduction and a valuable reference.

Artist, Anarchist : with Essays

Rolf Sachsse

Michael Ruetz is the major photographic chronicler of the period around 1968. Ruetz was more interested in the upheaval than in the students revolting in lecture halls and out on the street. The political earthquake and its consequences were documented not just at the epicenter but also on the edges in Hamburgs Kiez, the eastern half of Berlin, passers-by on the street and in the Third World. Unlike any other photographer, Ruetz caught the mood of the time, the political, artistic and intellectual climate change. Many of his photographs have become iconic images, firmly planted in our collective pictorial memory.

Michael Ruetz

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