Von Erde schöner - Peter Piller
Today, with Google Earth on every device, seeing the world from above is part of everyday life. Yet back in the 1980s, it was a novelty to see your own home from a bird's-eye view, and people bought such photos to enjoy the change of perspective on their own home.
This is how the archive that Peter Piller used for the publication Von Erde schöner [More Beautiful on Earth] came into being: 12,000 photographs taken between 1979 and 1983 and sold door-to-door by a shrewd businessman. They show the drab, conventional, often generic and sometimes over-customized homes of German homeowners. Working with this enormous collection of aerial photos, a task Piller described as a journey into his own past, he selected 300 photos, arranging them by similarities, creating a light intrigue throughout the book.
Oscillating between comedy and sad truth, the revealing photographs don't just allow us to travel back in time: they manage to show the raw everyday life of real people. What's more, thanks to the sorting carried out by the artist, they bear witness to the astonishing similarity of their behavior: from the similar construction methods of the houses themselves and the cars confused with pedantically laid garden tiles, less-than-useful mini-pools or ugly excavations.
As the first publication was rare and sought-after, we can now present a new edition from Verlag Bernd Detsch. Not only is it revised and of better quality, thanks to advanced printing technology, but the artist insisted that it be reissued.
Published by Verlag Bernd Detsch, 2017
317 pages
28.5 x 28.5 cm
ISBN : 978-3-940602-07-7
Today, with Google Earth on every device, seeing the world from above is part of everyday life. Yet back in the 1980s, it was a novelty to see your own home from a bird's-eye view, and people bought such photos to enjoy the change of perspective on their own home.
This is how the archive that Peter Piller used for the publication Von Erde schöner [More Beautiful on Earth] came into being: 12,000 photographs taken between 1979 and 1983 and sold door-to-door by a shrewd businessman. They show the drab, conventional, often generic and sometimes over-customized homes of German homeowners. Working with this enormous collection of aerial photos, a task Piller described as a journey into his own past, he selected 300 photos, arranging them by similarities, creating a light intrigue throughout the book.
Oscillating between comedy and sad truth, the revealing photographs don't just allow us to travel back in time: they manage to show the raw everyday life of real people. What's more, thanks to the sorting carried out by the artist, they bear witness to the astonishing similarity of their behavior: from the similar construction methods of the houses themselves and the cars confused with pedantically laid garden tiles, less-than-useful mini-pools or ugly excavations.
As the first publication was rare and sought-after, we can now present a new edition from Verlag Bernd Detsch. Not only is it revised and of better quality, thanks to advanced printing technology, but the artist insisted that it be reissued.
Published by Verlag Bernd Detsch, 2017
317 pages
28.5 x 28.5 cm
ISBN : 978-3-940602-07-7
Today, with Google Earth on every device, seeing the world from above is part of everyday life. Yet back in the 1980s, it was a novelty to see your own home from a bird's-eye view, and people bought such photos to enjoy the change of perspective on their own home.
This is how the archive that Peter Piller used for the publication Von Erde schöner [More Beautiful on Earth] came into being: 12,000 photographs taken between 1979 and 1983 and sold door-to-door by a shrewd businessman. They show the drab, conventional, often generic and sometimes over-customized homes of German homeowners. Working with this enormous collection of aerial photos, a task Piller described as a journey into his own past, he selected 300 photos, arranging them by similarities, creating a light intrigue throughout the book.
Oscillating between comedy and sad truth, the revealing photographs don't just allow us to travel back in time: they manage to show the raw everyday life of real people. What's more, thanks to the sorting carried out by the artist, they bear witness to the astonishing similarity of their behavior: from the similar construction methods of the houses themselves and the cars confused with pedantically laid garden tiles, less-than-useful mini-pools or ugly excavations.
As the first publication was rare and sought-after, we can now present a new edition from Verlag Bernd Detsch. Not only is it revised and of better quality, thanks to advanced printing technology, but the artist insisted that it be reissued.
Published by Verlag Bernd Detsch, 2017
317 pages
28.5 x 28.5 cm
ISBN : 978-3-940602-07-7
