The book has shaped the institutional work of the FOTOHOF for more than two decades, both through the publishing line and through the library, which currently has more than 10,000 titles available for research. With the move into the new rooms, a series of exhibitions on the subject of “photo books“ will also be introduced. Selected works from the history of Austrian photo books will be presented in the library – as a cabinet piece, so to speak, to the ongoing exhibitions. On display will not only be artists’ books, but also the original photographs for the respective publications. The tense relationship between book and exhibition presentation is a topic, as is the question of the significance of the photo book in the oeuvre of the respective photographer.

The premiere of the new exhibition format is dedicated to Peter Dressler’s artist book “Zwischenspiel“ in vintage works. It brings together photographs of his urban explorations in Vienna in the early 1970s. A book draft with original prints was created as late as 1973, but it was not published until 1989. Dressler does not conceive of a strict pictorial history. “Zwischenspiel“ develops its special charm from the manifold references and allusions within the individual images. In the book, we move on a real-fantastic journey through Dressler’s Vienna, which – without falling into the trap of cloying Vienna clichés – lives from the power of the associative combination of images. Dressler finds the material for his narrative “where the substance, the quality, the magic of the everyday is still present to a high degree“. (P. D. 1989) – in Vienna.