Article in published in
On Paper
New York, Nov-Dec 2001 issue

“MEXICO ... a two-volume artists’ book, each volume 44 pages, in an edition of 25 plus ten artists’ proofs. Each volume measures 17,5 x 50 cm and includes 33 black-and-white photographs printed on photo-sensitive handmade Kozo paper, as well as a text comprising letters to Köhler from friends in Mexico. Designed by Clemens-Tobias Lange, who also printed the images, the books are bound in loose sheets slung over a little pole such that they may be removed and displayed separately. Black-cloth binding is by Thomas Zwang, Hamburg, and Julie Penzel-Althoff provided English translation. The Kozo paper was handmade by Köhler in Japan. These two volumes, long stretches of horizontal images, are meant to be viewed simultaneously, and indeed the title is split on the volumes’ spine so that they must be superimposed for the letters to be legible. The photos of Mexico – in the first volume of daily life, and in the second, of festivals – are printed on a translucent Kozo that allows the images to reverse themselves as the pages are turned. Cut off in radically horizontal viewpoints, the images can be arranges in jarring juxtapositions for example between a peaceful bull near a broken fence amd a stampede of the animals at a festival, racing along and disappearing into the grainy dust-colored page. The edges of the paper are deckled, and sometimes a bid of red stain appears along them, actually a Mexican pigment. The letters are repetitive and mundane, the writers ordinary people, who always hope for the same thing: that nothing has changed for their friend Stephan. In Mexico, change can be cataclysmic, so these are very good wishes for their German friend, who actually leads quite a peripatetic and changeable life. This book is a dreamy reminder of our big, big world and a testament to the connections that can surely be forged between its many sectors.“