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Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton. Tetragrammaton.
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When I was starting to collect comic books, I went two or three times a day to thrift stores in Cologne looking for new arrivals of old books.
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But I thought I would be the only boy in the in Germany doing this. Mhm.
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Later I found out that there was already a small market of others comic book collectors.
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comic book collectors and they were all like 10, 20 years older than me.
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You know, they were buying, looking for the lost dreams of their childhood, so to say.
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And um when I understood that uh they paid real money for this.
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Real money was at that time, let's say, five marks or 10 or 20 or so.
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But it was good if you paid 20 cents and you sold it for 20 marks, well nothing wrong with that.
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So, I became a dealer in in comic books and I typed with a typewriter I was from in an alphabetical order writing down all these comic book series and which numbers I had and the condition.
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And I sent it out, let's say, twice a year or so and uh they were it started in the '70s and they were comic book conventions.
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And uh I went there and I was always the youngest and people kind of thought that you know, all these comic book collectors were kind of nerdy, you know, because let's put it this way, not that I didn't like them, but I felt I was different.
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Different in a way because these people were only interested in this and this like totally focused on one detail and here and that was never I appreciated it very much, but I thought there is a world around beside of this.
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So, I loved it, but I thought I can love as well other things.
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But I understood how the collector's mind or heart is ticking.
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First of all, you have to be you have to feel serious, you know, because especially with the comic books adult people thought, "Okay, this is something for children or whatever young adults."
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And that is not the case.
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I mean, of course it was predominant the group.
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But they have to feel safe in what they're doing.
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And um that was later for me important publishing because I always tried to make it as appealing and serious and attractive as I could that people could be careless and happy with their hobby, you know? Mhm.
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That they did not have to hide it underneath I don't know where, the carpet.
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What did the mailing list grow into?
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The mailing list it was a basis for me to open this little store.
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It was like 25 square meters or 30 like that like 300 square feet.
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And I had all the old comic books and as well new ones from a lot from America by the way from the East from the West Coast like underground comics. Zap. Zap, yes. And the Freak Brothers. Yes.
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And later as well came Raw magazine Mhm.
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by Art Spiegelman and many others.
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And uh uh And now I thought there are some guys because it was very male-dominant, like 99% of this whole comic book scene at that time at least.
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I thought there are quite a number of outstanding artists and narrator storytellers.
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And uh So, I loved to get these publications which were mainly done by small publishers from all over the world and sell them in this little store. And that was a novelty. And uh people loved it.
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They thought on top of this I was a young boy and then I was still 18 when I opened the store.
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The next day I turned 19.
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But I thought it sounds much better biographically that I opened with 18.
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And they kind of loved to support me.
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That's what nice as well to see.
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Were there any other comic book stores in Cologne? No.
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But there was nothing really in Germany as well.
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I think there was one in Berlin, yeah.
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And you know, I had to get all these suppliers from Holland.
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I had to drive there all the time.
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And uh to to Paris, to Belgium.
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And uh but it was doing really well and um then I had the fortune as well.
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I met a guy, Ludwig was his name.
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And we kind of hit it off and he became responsible for selling all this stuff as well.
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Not to our bookstore we had, but as well to retailers in Germany and in Europe and in America everywhere. like a wholesaler.
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Became a wholesaler and uh then we became wholesalers for illustrated books, yeah. And uh art books.
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And the the big thing at that time was where we made us.
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So remainder is by the definition, you know, an overstock a publisher can't get rid of.
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And that was something we started and bought all the failures of other publishers for a dollar, a few dollars.
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And at one moment that that was a changing point for at least my life we could buy an overstock of a book on René Magritte, the Belgian surrealist painter, and they had a big number.
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It was 40,000 copies and I remember it cost $1.
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And but it was still $40,000.
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I mean anyhow we And it was a book that it seemed like maybe nobody wanted because they had all these books that nobody wanted.
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The the main reason is people thought you cannot sell art books in a bigger edition of I don't know, let's say like 2,000 copies or so.
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And they have to be sold through specialty art book stores.
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And I thought well, why should that be the case?
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Because when I started I always disliked the threshold of a certain store when you have books only behind covered behind glasses.
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So we thought if we can get rid of the threshold and as well if we can change the price so that people who are interested can easily buy it.
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And we had the price then at 9.
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95 German marks was what was at that time?
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Let's say like $6, once we did this they flew out of the not the shelf but out of the stack.
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Yeah, and they did really super well and that was the beginning and it was still a foreign English language book.
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So we thought if this book is available in German, might do even better in Germany.
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But to lower up printing prices, we had to combine as well different languages together.
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I mean in different versions, an English one, a German one, French, and so on.
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So we had to translate all this stuff.
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We had no idea how to do this as well.
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Basically we had no idea about anything, you know. Yeah.
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And then when you translate it, you would you do the same book in multiple editions or would you put all the translations in in one book?
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No, what we did is we had in different editions, you know, in different editions.
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And That makes it more complicated also in terms of stocking and how many to press. doesn't make it easier.
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But on the other hand at that time there was such, you know, a thirst for pictures, you know.
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And it was a real novelty and at that price it was unbeatable and people just started to buy our books like crazy.
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What's the first book you published?
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The first book was a book on Dali and um that was a book we bought the rights from an English company.
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But then later other book publishers they didn't want to sell any licenses to us because they thought these are crazy punks or I don't know they changed the entire market and so they didn't really want to cooperate with us.
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So we had to do it on our own and but we never did this of course and had no idea how to do it.
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But lucky we had some editors who were wonderful from day one onwards and we were able to do books, our own books and in our own style.
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At least that's how we we thought we we how it should be.
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And uh this went very well.
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So, we did small books and medium small ones, big ones, and much bigger ones.
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Were all of the first books art books?
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Well, they were all illustrated.
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Yes, they were all artist monography monographs.
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We did Dali, Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, but let's say all the first the household names, but very early on as well we did some more specialties we thought which are interesting. At least we thought so.
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And so we might be the case with others as well that they like that.
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So, since I had no formal education about anything, I remember I once asked a art historian professor, "Can you teach me how to navigate around here?"
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And I thought, "Yes, he he could."
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But he said, "No, no, you have to do it all on your own." And I said, "Oh, fuck."
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But on the other hand, it was uh I liked the answer as well, you know?
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Because you have to do it on your own, and otherwise nobody can help you.
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I know later on that I always could ask people for this and that and that, but if you don't have your own initiative to do it, you cannot get a chip implemented in your brain that gives you knowledge on these and these and these unknown territories for you.
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So, since we had no formal I had no formal education and all the other punks working with me know either with a few exceptions, we brought everything in we thought is interesting.
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So, and a lot of this is I remember when we did the first book on Tom of Finland in the 1980s, and I I loved this stuff from the beginning on, and I'm not gay.
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And I thought this guy is a very cultured, very significant person, uh artist, because he took the guilt away from being of being homosexual.
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So, you see you saw uh people who had fun in how who they are and what are they doing.
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And on the other hand, uh it was uh just artistically wonderfully done.
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When we did the first book on Tom of Finland, people thought we are really getting crazy here, because it was maybe 1987.
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And I always thought, "What's wrong?
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Why can't Tom of Finland not coexist next to Van Gogh and Monet and Gauguin and whomever, you know?" Yeah. Who decides this?
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And but like 40 years ago, the world was in this way for sure different.
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It was a much stricter hierarchy what is acceptable and what is in this artist canon or not. Yeah.
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And if uh you cannot just bring somebody in and say he or she is in this uh circle.
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But since we had no idea about it and we thought differently, we easily could do it.
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And beside of this, I I never cared about this.
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Have any of your books ever been banned? Very, very rarely.
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Uh I know that um Hefner from Playboy, he said once to me about our books, "They can get away with murder and we for us uh they they attack us right away."
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Somehow we were lucky all our from the beginning onwards that they let us live.
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But it sounds like you always presented everything within the context of let's call it fine art. Yes.
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Yes, and so I thought probably people were afraid saying, "Look, okay, if I do this then I get in trouble with Leonardo and Michelangelo and I look like a I don't know.
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It doesn't make me look good. That's possible, yes. Mhm.
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But beside of this, maybe it was just luck as well.
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I always felt like a a lucky guy and uh Yeah.
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when I turned 30, I remember like months before I thought somehow I had this fixated idea that when I'm 30, my luck will leave me.
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And then I turned 30 and nothing happened.
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I mean, nothing bad happened.
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And then I thought, "Okay, maybe I would just was fortunate to be born under a lucky star." Yes.
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That was important for me for a many reasons because first of all, people who are successful in my mind far too often think uh that they are the ones who made it all happen because they work so hard or had this these great ideas. I I doubt this.
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Of course, you have to work and you have to work a lot. Yes.
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There was something you said earlier about the other comic collectors who were older than you that they were trying to capture lost dreams of childhood. Yes.
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Would you say the lost dreams of childhood might be a good way to describe fashion books? Oh. Interesting thought.
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Yes, but probably not childhood only. Yeah.
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But maybe even dreams for grown-ups. Yeah.
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For my side, I must say childhood is like this.
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It was formative for me to be brought up in the 1960s and 70s, yeah.
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And I would be no way a different person if it would have happened 10 years later or 50 years earlier, or whatever, yeah.
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But the dreams in childhood are the ones which uh you will have all your life, yeah.
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And um hopefully they materialize or come true.
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Um because nothing is sadder uh than uh you see a grown-up and uh none of the childhood dreams realized. Mhm. You know.
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I think a driving force for me myself was uh certainly growing up as the fifth uh child uh of my parents.
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My uh older brother, he committed suicide when he was in his early 20s, and I was uh it was a week before my 10th birthday.
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And that was of course a tragedy you can't really um deal with it, certainly not at a time like that, because people did not really talk about stuff like that.
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It happens, and then they move on.
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And later it broke uh for sure my father's heart.
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This and maybe the Second World War, both together.
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So I grew up, I became an adult pretty fast, uh certainly faster than others with a different fate.
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Um ideally loved my parents, both my father and my mother.
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My father had a more closer relationship towards, although not that because he did a lot with me, that was not the case, but I always felt supported and loved by him.
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I never questioned this, and I never ever questioned this with my mother.
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So a lot what happened later, you know, I can see that it the first moment, let's say the landing on the moon. We saw this together.
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And later we did the book uh signed by Buzz Aldrin or I don't know whether it was the Rolling Stones or Beatles stuff which happened in the '60s.
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So, maybe I was stuck or still stuck in the early 1970s.
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So, my mental development only partially grew, you know?
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So, in a way then my lost childhood dreams I translated them into books somehow. Yeah.
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And at the same time after my father died, he was unfortunately only like 60 60 years old.
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Maybe I was looking as well for father surrogates with all the people I had the luck to work with.
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People were a generation older than me, yeah, or my parents' generation.
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And that was probably as well how to connect in a way with my father who died early.
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And as well to connect with my German heritage because as you know and for what happened of the great tragedies that uh all what made Germany uh sophisticated, interesting was uh eradicated uh either people were killed or they emigrate.
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And somehow maybe I had to pick up the traces of the emigrees all the world and uh put a part of their story into books.
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Uh I don't know whether they make sense and maybe that's the reason as well why I came to California.
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Maybe it was, you know, like a a drive like a let's say like a like a salmon has to go back Yeah.
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in the circle of the life Yes.
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to a place where they had no idea that they come from there. Yes.
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So, I'm a Californian German salmon.
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I love the idea of looking for the wise elders to uh to guide you, it sounds like.
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know what was wonderful bringing going growing up in my parents' house.
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You know, we had always a big a wonderful wide mix of characters there including people with some artists and writers, but as well just my family's all traces, all walks of life in a way.
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And I I was exposed to adults from being a little child.
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So, we didn't never had see that these are the children, here are the adults.
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It was all mixed together.
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So, I loved old people from the beginning on as much as I loved young ones, but the older ones had more interesting stuff to talk about because they uh had a life already, and the others had maybe nothing or just a playground or a soccer ball or whatever, yeah. So, I never cared.
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I was I'm happy that I was exposed to old people when I was super young. Yeah.
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And the best reward was I remember this with some artists as well when they treated you not as a child, but treated you as an adult. Yes. Yeah.
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That was even cooler because then it meant you were taken serious, you know.
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Nicotine is an addictive chemical. Tell me about Cologne. Cologne or the Cologne.
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Cologne, historically, most northern colony of the Roman Empire.
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That's where the name comes from.
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But it's important as well because Cologne was from the beginning on a mix of different people.
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This case, the Romans, the Germans.
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And so it was always a much more open city.
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Later, French here were there for a while and this kind of gave an imprint on the Cologne DNA.
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So, you know, in Germany we have like 17 different states are in Germany and they are all quite different from each other.
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They speak as well not a different language but a different dialect and the when you hear the dialects, they are profoundly different from the let's say eastern Germany to the south in Bavaria.
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So, growing up in Cologne for me was wonderful.
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It was a city with little less than a million people and we were lucky in Cologne that after the war it was very heavily destroyed.
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There was the WDR that was Westdeutscher Rundfunk.
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And this radio station was quite influential as well for American music in general because all the great not only classical musicians but as well all jazz musicians came to Cologne to record and this from the 1950s onwards.
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Then there were some other there was a Photokina which was the a fair for photography starting in the early 1950s and there were a couple of collectors or big collectors for pop art like in the 1960s.
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So, there are a couple of cultural players coming together and that probably created the ground that Cologne was for about maybe 10 15 years not the epicenter of the world but at least for Europe and contemporary art, it was one of the few important cities.
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Because it was kind of run down, the people were welcoming, and rents were cheap, so all what is necessary as a fertile ground.
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And as you know, there are some people coming or they attract others like a magnet, you know.
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Specifically artists they usually or some kind of artists they are not alone, they have their own uh stellar system around them.
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And if you have one or two, it's then you have 20 or 30 or 50, and that creates this and then later they are gone somewhere else, so it's nothing forever. Yeah.
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But in the '70s and '80s, it is fair to say uh that probably all great visual artists in the world uh showed there at least once, twice, or several times.
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Um when I started the publishing house in 1980, all the great shows popped up just literally in front of our house there.
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Whether that was Cindy Sherman or Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Kippenberger.
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So this generation definitely had this foundation for a while in Cologne and of course then in New York. Yeah.
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Cologne was wonderful to me because as a young boy, there was a tram I could move around freely and uh I was not monitored.
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I mean, at that time parents did not monitor their children anyhow, I think.
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It was not only for me, but they gave me the that gave me the impression that uh they believed in me and it was less work for them.
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My father always said a good child uh educates itself.
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Which is I I took this like many other things from my father as well in my education skills, the limited ones.
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On the other hand, this is of course father's work, I have to say.
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Would you say Taschen lives outside of the rest of the publishing industry in that if you look at the percentage of books that are selling and if the whole industry is going down, does that affect you the same way or different? We are outside.
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That's not because we want to be in our side. It just happened.
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I don't I only know a handful of colleagues and I was never in any organizations or spend any of my time in on behalf of the whatever.
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We we did what we thought is right or we thought would make sense whether that worked out in the end is a second question, but we are not organized in whatever book trade categories.
28:15
Tell me about the first Sumo book.
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I can tell you about the first Sumo was Helmut Newton and I loved since I was a young man Helmut Newton.
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Helmut Newton was born in Berlin, Jewish family.
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His real name was Helmut Neustädter.
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He changed it when he emigrated to Australia in the 1930s from Berlin in '36.
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So, I loved Helmut Newton and I tried to get in contact with him for many years starting already in the 1980s.
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In the 1980s, I met him and he was always very welcoming and friendly to me, but looked at me like kind of skeptical.
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How much older was he than you?
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I can tell you he is exactly He was born in 1920 one and uh he's 40 years older.
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And uh of course, he represented I mean, it was an entire different world and uh but uh I met him in Ber- Berlin in 19 in the 1980s.
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And at that time, I thought, "Mr.
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Newton, could we do bed sheets with the big nudes?"
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That was what he just started.
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And he said, "That's an interesting idea. Uh send me samples."
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And we made samples, but we had no idea to do it and it looked awful.
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It looked like I couldn't show it.
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And I said, "I was too embarrassed."
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The idea was to do bed sheets? Yes.
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But the reason why was I know that he had a gallery for his prints or different galleries.
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I had a publisher for his books.
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Uh somehow I thought "How can I get into this, yeah?
30:04
And have to do something he likes as well."
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Anyhow, that didn't work at all, but we stayed in contact.
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That was So, we were on speaking terms at least.
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But then le- later, I thought that his photos uh when they are in a bigger size or in a big size, they get a life in a different way.
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And uh I made a sample and in this sumo size or we call it sumo had no uh other reference than the sumo fighters, these big guys.
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And um it's about 3 ft by 4 ft, something like this.
30:43
on the length of the feet.
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Ah, feet, yes, American feet. It is 50 by 70 cm.
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Which is, yeah, a couple of feet, yeah, high, you know.
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And we had this sample, the dummy done, and he was in Los Angeles staying in the wintertime at the Chateau Marmont, and I asked him to come over to the Sunset Marquis Hotel because I didn't want to carry this big thing.
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He came over, and he was in awe.
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We did it in a way he brought his wife, June, and I had to be smart on the second page there's a beautiful portrait of June Newton by Helmut.
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When she opened it, they both laughed as well, they understood it.
31:33
So, but the reason why I knew at that time that if there's a let's say Helmut and June Newton, if you really want to work with Helmut, you have to work at the same time with June.
31:45
And that was many artist couples the same.
31:48
You can't have a good relationship to one only, it will not work out well.
31:55
Uh, but it was a pleasure to work with her anyhow, and she was a great editor.
32:00
So, they saw all of this, and I said, "Helmut, oh, Mr. Newton."
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I was always on on terms with him.
32:06
I said, "Herr Newton, we can do this and this.
32:08
So, we have 10,000 copies.
32:10
If you can sign them all, um, you I can give you offer you this amount of money."
32:19
It had to have a certain numbers of zeros, yeah. Yeah.
32:24
That he makes him, uh, Get his attention. Get his attention. Yeah.
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Because he was at that time the biggest name in the world, not only photography, he was one of the big artists, everyone knew worldwide. Yes.
32:38
So, and um I definitely thought I have to get to work with this man because I admire him number one, and second, it will do really well. So, he trusted me.
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From there on, it was very difficult to get this as well produced in a way that because he was at that time 80 years old and I was a I don't know whatever, 35, 40.
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And uh his risk was enormous because if you do a big book which is a big failure and as well looks like a big piece of S and I T, that does not help you when you are at your height of the career.
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And for no reason you do this.
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So, anyhow, he trusted me and it worked for it took couple of years that we made it work and then fortunately it became as well for him a milestone in his artistic life.
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The book was a new story. Yes. No doubt.
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And that's rare to get that much interest.
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invent invented the big oversized books because they have a history going back 500 years, but somehow at least we tried to make it work the state-of-the-art production at that time.
33:56
And you even created a table for the book to live with.
34:00
Yes, that was another difficult design issue and I know at that time Helmut Newton Philippe Starck did design.
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He was not happy with the design, but to bring them together.
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In the end, I we wanted to make it look lighter than it was.
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Light, I mean, light waiter. Kind of floating.
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And I think Starck did a great a fantastic design on this and it worked out really well and it was a huge success for us and uh through Helmut who I became very close then in later years.
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He was kind enough to s- bring me together with all his friends.
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And he had friends from all walks of life everywhere in the world.
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And that was wonderful for me and very helpful for all other books we did later.
35:00
Tell me the psychology of book sizes.
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So, you have books that are I'll call them coffee table book size.
35:06
Then you have small books that are very thick.
35:12
And then you have books like Sumo, giant books.
35:15
Yeah, we always believed in in formats.
35:19
That means uh the ratio between length and width and thickness and of course as well how the paper is uh what kind of paper you have, the color and the texture, how it's haptically in your hands. Yeah.
35:37
And that takes a long time to produce a perfect product.
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And once you have it, uh then better keep it and go ahead with it. Yeah.
35:50
Because it's not easy to have this reinvented.
35:57
We have all kinds of sizes, very small ones, very big ones, but they all have to have an equilibrium that they look like they are designed to be like this.
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If you just inflate something that is overly big, it just doesn't work.
36:13
I mean, it works for a second, but not longer.
36:20
And um with the Sumo, that was uh Yeah, that was in in a way a novelty and we kind of perfectly hit it off and it became one of the certainly our most successful book we ever had, you know, or at least our most popular famous one. Yeah. Yeah.
36:44
I've seen that the first edition sold for over $400,000 at auction.
36:49
Yes, what we did was the idea and we succeeded thankfully.
36:56
We did the first copy was signed by 100 people were portrayed in the book.
37:04
And uh this was auctioned in the year 2000 in Berlin and it became the most expensive book published in the 20th century. Wow.
37:15
And um yeah, from there on we were the happy kids.
37:23
And could not believe our luck.
37:26
But you know you never know how stuff works till you did it, you know.
37:34
Does it sound very smart? No.
37:38
Do you ever do multiple formats?
37:38
Like do you ever release a book big and then release it small? Oh, all the time.
37:44
That's the whole that's definitely the concept of the our publishing idea.
37:49
Because we put a lot of time, money, and passion into and every big production.
37:58
And we only can do it because we want to see the same book in print for the next 10, 20, or 50 years. Yeah.
38:07
So we have a lot of books which are now 40 years old in our program.
38:11
And of course we update them and so.
38:13
But uh if we would not make the smaller versions later because the big versions have more or less an unlimited budget.
38:24
So, we spend or pay what we think is worth to do.
38:30
And we don't make a lot of calculations up front.
38:32
We just put in what we need.
38:36
And to make it work, you have to have it for long it needs a long long shelf life. Yeah.
38:45
But beside of this, you know, once you did a book on let's say the complete paintings of Van Gogh, there's no change 10 years later or 20 years later unless there's another painting discovered or so, but basically it is what it is. Yeah.
38:58
Therefore, we like to do it once.
39:02
Then it's done, you know.
39:07
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40:26
com/tetra and get started today. You did a book.
40:35
I believe it's called Apartment House Wrestling.
40:37
Do you know what that is? Definitely.
40:41
I didn't know before, but uh now I do know.
40:44
There was a German photographer, his name was Theo Erat. He lived in Los Angeles.
40:49
I mean, he was uh there for decades already.
40:54
And uh that he covered kind of a niche market subject, and it was apartment wrestling.
41:00
And a friend of mine, the artist two artists from California, Mike Kelley and Jamie Cameron, they suggested me to look into his work.
41:11
So, I visited him in uh Silver Lake about 25 years ago.
41:21
And he was surprised that somebody is seriously interested in this stuff.
41:23
I said, "No, I really want to I would like to see this."
41:27
And they had a, you know, uh you can see a photographer what kind of you see right away it is a composition, how can they deal with light and put it all together.
41:37
And this guy definitely uh knew what he was doing.
41:41
Although the subject was so uh less than marginal, and I thought that is admirable, how can somebody spend years of his life doing girls apartment wrestling photos.
41:56
And so, we thought we have to make a big book with this guy.
42:05
It was The title was Exquisite Mayhem. Was it well received?
42:10
Well, let's put that is a relative.
42:10
I know some friends for instance, Bruce Weber told me Okay, a guy who does a book like this, he has to be a respected man of whatever. Yeah.
42:23
And I thought Bruce, that is very kind of you that to say that specially when comes from you.
42:27
And but otherwise it was selling not at all.
42:34
I think uh it was really sold for many years.
42:35
But we loved each and every book we printed. Yeah.
42:43
And after a while we got rid of all of them as well.
42:47
Yeah, maybe it was too early. Well, or maybe too late. Who knows?
42:54
Ah, I can tell you here but Helmut Newton again story.
42:56
We did 2 years later we did we started this big book on Muhammad Ali it's called Goat, Greatest of All Time.
43:04
And um I met him through his manager Bernie Yuman from Las Vegas, wonderful man.
43:13
And maybe the only manager I loved from the first day onwards because usually always deal only direct with talent.
43:22
And so Bernie I told him, okay, I have to send him one of these big Helmut Newton Sumo books that he understands Yes. the scale of it and so.
43:31
And I didn't think too much about it.
43:34
So I had him send this copy.
43:38
And uh Bernie who was never really short of words, but that time he called me and said, "Benedict, tell me what what Ali just called me."
43:47
And he said, "Why did this guy Taschen send me a book with a big naked white woman on the cover to me as a Muslim?"
43:59
And Bernie said, "What uh should I tell him now?"
44:03
And I thought, okay, Bernie, well, tell him he just got it wrong.
44:05
So, these were just women have no money for clothes, you know? Poor women.
44:16
And uh that's how I I said, "Okay, I'll do this."
44:18
So, I called he called him.
44:20
And Ali was laughing and then he was happy.
44:24
And because he had to sign 10,000 books. Wow.
44:28
And that took him a a while, yeah.
44:31
Did you get to meet him personally? Oh, yes, often. Very often.
44:35
How was that relationship?
44:36
Oh, I mean, it was the most amazing because he was for me being a child growing up in the 1960s, I used to watch with my family, with my father, mother, and siblings.
44:50
These were the first live cast sports events in the world.
44:52
So, and in Germany, it was in the middle of the night.
44:57
And we saw these quite a number of the fights.
45:01
And he was always one of my great inspirations and heroes. Yeah.
45:07
And uh that was a big thing for me the first time I met him and we really wanted to make it work in a way that he does not need me or doesn't need a book because he is Muhammad Ali.
45:18
But on the other hand, we put more probably into this book than into any other book.
45:27
And uh we tried uh I visited dozens of photographers all over the world and uh here in America and uh Anyhow, with Ali, that was wonderful because he was uh first time he saw the book, he said, "I didn't know that I was so great."
45:49
And uh No, that was was wonderful.
45:49
He There was um he loved it and it was more than well received all over the world.
45:58
It was definitely a a a of love.
46:02
Did you in one place and then ship books everywhere or do you print in different countries?
46:07
on the formats, but more ex- there's a bigger books, let's say like this Ali book or the Newton, this is mainly done printed in Italy and we have our own bindery for oversized books in Italy because it's such a specialty.
46:20
You need certain equipment for this and more or less nobody can do this in the world.
46:28
So, we have our own uh book binding company.
46:32
Yeah, so Ali, that was very rewarding for us as well because, you know, a guy who had everything in the world and all the unbelievable ups and downs and ups again and downs and not up and he was happy like a little child.
46:46
That was the most rewarding part of it, you know.
46:52
To make him happy and I think as well if you you see the book today or in I don't know, 50 years from now, Yes.
47:01
people will say, "Wow, who was this guy? Man." Yeah. What a life. Yeah.
47:07
What was the first cinema book that you put out?
47:11
Oh, we did a couple, but the first important one I thought which was really looking different from other movie books, that was Billy Wilder on Some Like It Hot.
47:22
And Billy Wilder was the one of the directors I really loved because not only was a missing link for me, generations two generations ahead of me from Germany who emigrated to America in the '30s and became one of the most successful and important directors ever.
47:49
I met him in the 1990s in Los Angeles and by by way through the introduction of Helmut Newton, kind enough, like he always was.
48:01
And somehow, whenever I was in Los Angeles, I'm I saw him couple of times a week. He was a wonderful man.
48:08
He You know, he had eyes and ears to listen and see stuff others won't.
48:12
You know, like how can I describe it?
48:17
And he always had this very human touch in whatever he did, whether it was drama, comedy, or uh you know, film noir.
48:27
But it always had this Wilder touch.
48:27
So, when we When I suggested him to do this book on Some Like It Hot, he was very curious and said, "Yes, great."
48:35
He He was already in his early 90s at that time. Wow. But very helpful he was.
48:42
We were able to talk with more more or less everyone who was still alive who participated in the movie.
48:52
Yeah, I would say the Some Like It Hot book was first.
48:54
And then we did the first book on Stanley Kubrick.
48:59
Unfortunately, when the book came out, he was he passed away already.
49:05
Kubrick, in the meantime, we did another four, five different other ones on individual movies like The Shining. We did 2001.
49:14
And on Napoleon, that was a the most famous movie never made. Was never realized. Yeah.
49:23
Tell me about the Chemosphere house. The Chemosphere house?
49:29
I didn't really know about the Chemosphere house.
49:30
What I did know was a picture by Julius Shulman.
49:33
It's kind of a profile picture of the house in the hillside overlooking the valley.
49:39
And I said, "Wow, I want to see it right away."
49:44
So, the next day I drove by and uh I was in awe because it's such an incredible sculpture or let's say an expression of America.
49:59
Like a innocent America before the Vietnam War.
50:03
So, it is very flamboyant and you won't see anything like this in the rest of the world.
50:11
So, I definitely I would say I fell in love with the house on the side and uh I said I'll buy it and it was $995,000.
50:25
Minor detail was only that I didn't have that I didn't have the money.
50:29
So, but I said yes, I'll buy it anyhow. So, I bought it.
50:36
And um later I had to buy two pieces of art uh from my collection to make it work.
50:48
But from there on it started to become really costly because you had to renovate it and it needed really love and attention and I had the great luck that I could work with a Swiss-Mexican architect Frank Escher and his partner Ravi and they were very knowledgeable about Lautner.
51:08
So, he worked with him for a while before he passed.
51:11
So, and we restored it for 3-4 years and it I was really fortunate because most people architects who restore houses have no clue what they're doing.
51:25
Because specially in America, they love restorations which look very sleek.
51:28
But if it's sleek that in the end you ripped out the soul of the house and it is gone, it's gone.
51:36
The same with furniture or with cars or whatever you restore. But they were different.
51:42
They wanted to preserve what they could preserve and only change which had a reason for it already in the past.
51:51
So and then later they won as well the prize for the best restoration of a house in um America from this year '97 or '98.
52:02
But the funny thing was there was later Matt Groening, you know, in the '90s he had a show, a Simpsons show, and it starts with uh Chemosphere house and the crooked for sale sign.
52:16
It's hangs like halfway down and it's full of spiderwebs because nobody bought the house over the years.
52:25
Anyhow, I'm happy it was kind of a getting married to the house and uh over the years we could buy some adjacent pieces of land and two other houses.
52:36
And so now we have uh around the Chemosphere house a whole hill of gardens.
52:45
How's the experience of living in that house? It's uh a masterpiece.
52:50
Whenever you whenever I am there or sleep there uh or just visiting, I can see that it's uh done in a unique moment of time and it was a combination of see, you know, the guy who built it, the builder, he was an I think an airplane engineer.
53:13
So he was very open to new ideas.
53:16
And the reason why it is built like it is, you know, it's sits on a massive concrete column which goes like uh 25 ft in the ground is because it was such a steep hillside, otherwise it would have been not buildable.
53:34
You had to excavate the whole thing. No, it's wonderful.
53:37
I mean, this house showed me what architecture can do.
53:44
How it can change your life as well.
53:44
In this case to the good.
53:50
When you take on a topic to do a book on, let's say uh case study houses. Oh, yeah.
53:58
feel an obligation to tell the whole story? Yes.
54:05
Once we are in there, we are in there.
54:07
And the Case Study Houses is a great example for me because I knew little bit about some of these architects.
54:18
The most famous ones like Neutra or Eames.
54:22
Uh but that was a whole range and all together maybe a dozen of these architects.
54:28
It started there was a magazine in Los Angeles published called Arts and Architecture by a guy named, I think, Richard Neutra.
54:39
And he started after It was started in 1945 after the war.
54:44
And there was a housing need in California.
54:49
Specifically in California, let's put it this way, from the homecoming soldiers.
54:54
And on top of this, all America was booming like never before.
55:00
And one critical issue, of course, was homes for these people.
55:04
And they started competition.
55:07
It was basically not a competition competition, but something like this.
55:11
With these Case Study Houses, how to make industrial materials which can be produced at a much better price.
55:22
How can you use it for contemporary architecture homes building?
55:27
So, these Case Study Houses it was very influential, but it did not lead to a kind of a mass market for these homes because in the end they were kind of ex- expensive, but it was a wonderful idea.
55:41
This modernist architecture that time was highly influential in a way that it was it represented a future believing optimistic America.
55:57
At that time, even before the Korean War, yeah.
56:02
And this was the expression of modernism.
56:07
And the Case Study Houses, I think all together there was about 25.
56:09
When we did our book, the only available publication of of either or not was 40 years backwards at that time.
56:20
I was a little pamphlet with few pages, but really nothing.
56:25
At the same time, my contemporary photographer illustrated, his name is Julius Shulman, and without Julius Shulman, he was kind of the memory of modernism, so to say, yeah.
56:36
He photographed all these buildings and made them look even better than they ever were, yeah, in some cases.
56:49
So, we did this Case Study House book and we made with the museum, I think with the MOCA in Los Angeles, and the event uh maybe 20 years ago, and we still at that time were like seven or eight living Case Study House architects there.
57:10
So, that was pretty amazing because they were in a way most of them were forgotten as well, yeah. It's a beautiful book. I love the wide format.
57:24
Yeah, but without Julius Shulman, no way that we could have done it.
57:29
That was definitely one of the many highlights I uh had Thank God visiting and meeting with Julius Shulman. He was born on 10 10 10.
57:43
I remember this because he said it repeatedly and it sounded easy to remember.
57:50
And uh when I came to see his house in the Hollywood Hills, uh it was definitely like a time tunnel room back in 1948 or whatever. Yeah.
58:03
He was a wonderful warm and uh humorous guy.
58:09
And uh when we I asked him, "Do you have something we can do together?"
58:11
And he said, "Yes, I'm just finishing my memoirs."
58:17
And I said, "Okay, well, I'm happy to do this with you."
58:20
And that's was the beginning of our collaboration and our and this case as well our friendship.
58:27
How many books did you do with him? Mhm.
58:31
We did uh maybe four, five. Yeah.
58:36
But we used his photos in many of other other architecture publications.
58:39
Like all the great photographers, he created his own style.
58:46
What made his photos difference beside of dramatic lighting and composition, he was It sounds funny, but that is a case.
58:55
He was the first photographer in architecture who introduced the human being into the humans into the picture. Nobody else did it.
59:04
It's funny, but But when you have a human in the picture, you understand scale.
59:09
Not only scale, you understand through the whole it it gives you architecture is made for humans, yeah. Yeah.
59:17
But the funny thing is that architects usually didn't like it.
59:22
Somehow it was like this that the pictures you see you saw them deserted like no human ever put a foot on the ground there, yeah?
59:33
And uh Julius not only had one, but as well groups interacting.
59:38
And as you say, of course, that's the only way to understand proportion and the size of all of it.
59:46
And it makes it more human. Yeah.
59:49
And it also the clothing stamps it with a date.
59:53
And all his photos his photography was classically elegant throughout.
59:56
And uh without Julius, something would be missed in this second part of the 20th century.
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1:01:38
L M N T Tell me about your relationship to books from your childhood.
1:01:49
My parents had a lot of books in their house and uh I grew up reading since I was a young boy.
1:01:56
One reason why I was I was often alone because I was the youngest out of five.
1:02:03
And uh they let me be myself.
1:02:08
And so, my books were my friends uh early on.
1:02:12
I read a lot of books as well, probably not appropriate for the age group, like Henry Miller.
1:02:20
So, and uh because I just took books out of the shelves and this and that.
1:02:27
And but others as well where I started I read all Jules Verne books.
1:02:32
And later, I I read a lot of American writers like uh Upton Sinclair or John Steinbeck or Raymond Chandler, Bukowski, and so on.
1:02:46
So, I was uh definitely a bookworm.
1:02:49
Not that I didn't go out or so.
1:02:51
This I did uh plentiful, yeah.
1:02:55
But uh I like I loved to read early on.
1:02:58
And when did your love of comic books come?
1:03:01
That came later when I read a already ton of books when I was maybe 12.
1:03:08
And by coincidence it happened I read uh the German Mickey Mouse magazine had as well it not just Mickey Mouse but the Duck family, and I liked always the Duck family.
1:03:20
Actually, that was the only thing I liked.
1:03:22
The rest I was not interested in, and um I found out Disney never uh allowed the artists to neither copyright nor sign who made the drawings or the narration, the storytelling.
1:03:39
But, the one was profoundly different from all the other ones.
1:03:42
Later, I found out his name was Carl Barks.
1:03:47
And he is kind of the creator of the Duck family, with Uncle Scrooge, Donald, the nephews, and everything.
1:03:54
Donald Duck and his offspring. Yes. Mhm.
1:03:58
He was not only an amazing storyteller, but as well as an artist, that what I have never seen it anywhere else. Mhm.
1:04:07
And uh his his stories uh I loved them from the beginning on, and I can say that I probably learned everything, at least I thought, at that time about America, California, Southern California, and capitalism.
1:04:25
This is cause of Carl Barks, Donald Duck.
1:04:28
I think he started in the mid '40s and and did it for 25 years or whatever.
1:04:35
And uh that was uh how I fall in love with comic books, or specifically with this guy.
1:04:40
Later, I found out that there were others in the world who did the same, and he had already a much growing fan base, Carl Barks.
1:04:47
But, unfortunately, beside of this comic book fan club circle, where he was a big star already 40 years ago or so, 50 years ago, he never became a household name.
1:05:03
But, he was uh inspirational for generations of children, and I mean, he is as great a writer as Mark Twain is, I would say, you know?
1:05:15
Or any other household great name.
1:05:22
And um without Callot books my life would have gone in the different direction.
1:05:28
I'm pretty sure about that.
1:05:31
Let's say there's a subject that you're interested in.
1:05:33
It could be a photographer for the past that you've come across or an architect whose work you liked. Tell me the process. You have the idea.
1:05:42
This is a subject worthy of doing a book. Yeah. What happens next?
1:05:49
We usually work always with the artist directly or whether the artist or photographer designer, so And if the artist has passed?
1:06:01
Well, then it's more difficult to work with him. Directly.
1:06:05
So you have to directly with his spirit. I see. Yeah, or in his spirit. Yeah.
1:06:11
No, we kind of what I want to say is we we are the we feel as if we take on this job to do this, it's a commitment and we just try to make the best out of it and uh it's a close collaboration.
1:06:24
We never do anything against someone but only with someone. Yeah.
1:06:31
And we you know, we are respectful.
1:06:35
Yeah, you know, we the goal is to get the best result.
1:06:40
And the second goal is of course to sell as much as we can. Yeah.
1:06:42
Because I always liked to sell, you know?
1:06:45
If you don't sell, then you're out of business, yeah?
1:06:50
Then nobody And it also doesn't spread the art.
1:06:51
Like if the goal is to turn people on to this great artist I was for a few years I was kind of a board in I was still in school but I was in a vaudeville theater for a few years and I why did I do it?
1:07:04
I had fun doing it, but if you don't get applause, then you're kind of you know? I mean Yeah. And that's the same.
1:07:14
If you don't If you make a book and nobody buys it, and that happens all the time, Yeah. Yeah.
1:07:20
That better a few times, but if it happens all the time, constantly, Yeah.
1:07:25
then maybe you better do something else, you know?
1:07:29
Are there any books that would be too dangerous to publish?
1:07:35
I would say maybe the one of the dangerous books we did is at least for certain parts of the world, like in China.
1:07:44
We we worked with a public enemy number one and number two close.
1:07:49
One is uh the Dalai Lama, and the second one is Ai Weiwei.
1:07:54
And they definitely did not like this at all. And but what can we do?
1:07:59
I mean, I'm admirer of China and of whatever 4,000 years of history, but that doesn't say that uh we can't do what we want to do, you know?
1:08:15
And for the Dalai Lama, it was um when we did this book on the murals of Tibet, it was, you know, keeping a record of this world heritage people don't know about because it's hidden in the middle of the highest mountains in the world, and a lot was destroyed by Chinese.
1:08:36
Or if it was not destroyed, it was not supported anymore, and then it fall apart.
1:08:42
So, art or what we're doing, if people think it's dangerous, they might be right because um the artists, they do what they want, and otherwise they wouldn't be artists, you know? Yeah.
1:09:01
So, and our heart or support is 100% behind the artist, nothing else.
1:09:08
First comes the artist and second comes the buyer. Yeah.
1:09:12
And everything else is only personal stuff you can forget about.
1:09:16
It's a direct communication between the artist and the person interested in the artist.
1:09:21
Everything else is noise. I fully agree with this. Yeah.
1:09:26
I mean I have no doubt at all that this is the at least for us the only way how to what makes us work, yeah, or what should make us work, you know.
1:09:36
Do you think of Taschen as a counterculture publishing house?
1:09:41
Look, we did a lot of counterculture over the years.
1:09:45
And um I can say, yes, it's certainly a substantial part of what we did.
1:09:55
I have to explain it in a way this is always changing, how the reception is what is counterculture and what is mainstream. Yes. That is nothing new.
1:10:04
I think it was always like this. Yes, yeah.
1:10:08
It's is has to do with time, but as well with fashion.
1:10:11
It happened to the greatest painter in the world. Let's say Vermeer.
1:10:18
You know, Vermeer was entirely forgotten for many, many years and then I don't know when it started in the late 19th century, people started to get interested in him in his work and he did only, I don't know, 35 paintings or so, but he was generally forgotten for decades or centuries and he is not the only one who shared this fate.
1:10:38
So, counterculture and culture, this is always in in limbo, you know, you cannot Yeah, it's counterculture until it gets popular enough to become mainstream.
1:10:52
Yeah, so it definitely had as well an advantage or there is an advantage if you uh have no prejudice because you have no knowledge, you know. Yeah.
1:11:03
Yeah, yeah, you don't know what you don't know.
1:11:05
eyes and ears to form it to your own opinion or something. Yeah.
1:11:09
And I was in a way forced to do this.
1:11:13
And on the other hand, I really liked as well this counterculture always. Yeah.
1:11:20
What was the first Taschen bookstore since you've been Taschen books?
1:11:28
Well, the first real bookstore we did was in Paris in Saint-Germain.
1:11:29
We did it in the late 1990s.
1:11:34
We worked together with a great French designer Philippe Starck and he loved our books, our program because you know, main part of our books is to democratize books in a way that they are easier accessible and at different price points available.
1:11:58
But he wanted to to create a design around it which looks uh kind of inviting, but on the other hand, it looks very precious as well.
1:12:10
And so we still have this store unaltered for 25 or longer more years now.
1:12:19
And it's always a great pleasure to see it how he did it long time ago.
1:12:26
And how many stores are there now around the world? Oh, we have maybe 15.
1:12:32
What percentage of the books that you put out are part of a series versus stand-alone books?
1:12:38
Well, they are in a way stand-alone books, but on the other hand, they are in a format which is a series where we have already let's say with a basic art books, we have already 150 others or so, yeah. Yeah. So, they are all alone. Yeah, Monographs.
1:12:55
They're on their own, standing alone, but there are many others in the same series, you know.
1:13:03
Do you do many books that are rooted in fashion?
1:13:07
Oh, we did a lot with um fashion designers.
1:13:10
Whatever it was, Issey Miyake or Valentino.
1:13:16
Karl Lagerfeld we did and a couple of others, Pucci.
1:13:20
It's not the most substantial part of our program, but we have quite a number of Recently, of course, over the last years, more street uh young designers like Virgil Abloh we did a it was one of the best-selling titles we had over the last couple of years. Yeah. How about posters?
1:13:42
The posters we're going to do a couple of more poster books are in the works.
1:13:49
Before photography came up, and that was maybe, let's say, in the 1950s, yeah.
1:13:56
The poster was, of course, the art form not only to advertise, but as well to Let's say, if you have movie posters. Yeah.
1:14:07
It was a genre how you advertised your products.
1:14:11
And uh since there was no photography, everything was painted.
1:14:16
It was a much more artistic work involved, yeah.
1:14:21
So, these posters are pretty remarkable, and once you see them, I fall in love uh uh with them.
1:14:30
It started all, more or less, with the Art Nouveau and the the end of the 19th century, when these printing machines were invented. Yeah, I love this stuff.
1:14:43
Are you ever surprised by which books sell or don't sell.
1:14:48
Yes, because it is not predictable. Yeah.
1:14:51
We don't do marketing that we first check is this something people are looking forward or what might people think about this and that.
1:15:02
We don't operate like this.
1:15:02
Not that we're not interested in it.
1:15:05
I think it's simply not possible.
1:15:07
How can we know what 5 billion people might think?
1:15:10
I don't even know what your neighbor knows or thinks. Or me myself, you know.
1:15:18
Of course we ask people and just always a handful or couple of people say, "What do you think about this and that?"
1:15:24
But you can do it is only very selected and as as more people you ask as more opinions you get and as more work you have.
1:15:30
If you feel yourself good with it, then the likelihood that it works, at least from the product here side here or artistically or from design, then it's very likely that others think the same. Yeah.
1:15:46
Unless the subject is such a marginal one that no one whatever you do and how beautiful you do it and how much a standard it is, it can't be successful because it's just too small a potential audience. Yeah.
1:16:02
But what it is exactly, I have no idea. I don't know.
1:16:06
That's a mystery and that's kind of fun as well that it stays like this.
1:16:09
It's not that it's entirely unpredictable.
1:16:11
I wouldn't go so far, but there are always titles which are doing so much better than others and uh if you would have known before, then everybody else would do it anyhow. Yeah.
1:16:26
Can you think of a book that you had high hopes for but for whatever reason didn't connect with the audience?
1:16:33
Yes, I mean some of these books that is it's not unexpected because we knew it is a very limited audience.
1:16:43
Let's say the apartment wrestling book, female with hot men, yeah.
1:16:49
We had a similar case with photographer his name was Elmar Bettos, and he was his love was foot and leg photography. Like fetish photography? Fetish, yeah, whatever.
1:17:03
I feel I mean that was his what he photographed, feet and legs. Yes.
1:17:08
So, and he lived in San Pedro and the leg language, your kind of talk, that was his.
1:17:21
Yeah, and I visited him at his home and I knew all a number of his photos in these different magazines and but a lot of these photos he did at his in his home, yeah, and then on his terrace there and all was So, I it was kind of a I would get very close to him and I really loved this guy and I loved it well.
1:17:47
No matter what the subject is, I just love it and people have an extraordinary drive of fun to do something very specific, yeah.
1:17:58
And no matter what it is, yeah.
1:18:00
Yeah, it's interesting when someone is focused on something that no one else is focusing on.
1:18:04
Yeah, or let's say at least very few others. Yes, yes.
1:18:10
Yeah, so he was the king of leg photography, so to say.
1:18:13
Same with the guy like Eric Stanton.
1:18:18
Eric Stanton, he was a comic book artist.
1:18:21
But as well, he was his key main subject was a dominant women, yeah.
1:18:29
Eric Stanton of I think Russian origin of the parents that came to New York in the 19 30s or 20s and uh when I I knew some of his comic books, they were all very kind of kinky, erotic ones.
1:18:48
And we made a big book out of this and he was uh attached in tears, so to say.
1:18:55
And I know that he had tons of followers over the years all over the world, yeah.
1:19:01
But there was never a big manifest of his work.
1:19:06
And for sure nobody really took it serious.
1:19:09
But it is serious and you know, it first of all, if you embrace your fantasies, this alone is the first step to make something special.
1:19:19
And that you're not feeling guilty that you have this fetish or that or this, it doesn't matter and he translated it in his works, in his drawings in a way nobody else, at least to my knowledge, did.
1:19:35
It requires some respect if somebody is doing it.
1:19:39
Let's say you go to a restaurant when somebody really puts a lot into the meal, yeah, whatever.
1:19:47
You should be respectful.
1:19:47
Don't ask, "Okay, can I have this with ketchup and this?"
1:19:53
That's not what you do, you know?
1:19:53
I mean, you can do it, but you make a fool out of yourself. yeah.
1:19:57
And I think if you see there's an extraordinary work in something, you have to be respectful and treat it like this, yeah.
1:20:09
Tell me about your relationship with National Geographic and how did it come about?
1:20:15
Oh, we were asked that was the It was an anniversary coming up.
1:20:17
It was the 125 years of National Geographic.
1:20:23
And as you know, that was always the magazine that probably for quite some time as well that was the largest circulation in the world.
1:20:33
And they did a remarkable job always in they spent more money into their assignments than anybody else.
1:20:41
People, photographers, and writers were working for months or sometimes years on a story.
1:20:49
And in the end it only you know, in the magazine you had like 10 pages or five or 15 if it was a lot.
1:20:58
So, we thought how can we make best use of this unique archive?
1:21:05
And so, we came up with a concept around the world with National Geographic in 125 years.
1:21:12
To this point, it is definitely one of my favorite books we did because first of all, we had this amazing archive and we had access to everything we wanted to do have.
1:21:28
And at that time, quite a number of these photographers were still alive as well. Yeah.
1:21:33
Once they saw the final book, they were I remember at least three of them were in tears because it was the first time that their work was seen in a different way and in a different scale as well on top of this because National Geographic, as you know, Small scale. pretty small, yeah. Yeah.
1:21:52
Based on that experience, are there are there great libraries of information out there that are just waiting for you to Oh, yeah.
1:22:01
I mean, there's always something.
1:22:03
We did we just finished a book on the archives of Life magazine. Fantastic.
1:22:08
That was only on Hollywood, yeah. Yeah.
1:22:12
And we were very happy with the final result in this because the material to start with is so vast already.
1:22:21
And then you have to go through the individual files.
1:22:23
And I knew all these files looked like when we were working on the goat uh greatest of all time Ali book.
1:22:30
I saw at least, I don't know, 20 different archives.
1:22:33
And one of the biggest ones was as well here with Life magazine and Sports Illustrated.
1:22:38
It was all the same company at that time, Time Life.
1:22:45
And so the photographers when they were assigned to a job, let's say, to photograph Humphrey Bogart in for on African Queen in uh somewhere where it's filmed in Africa.
1:22:57
There was one file with all the contact sheets.
1:23:00
But then as well, the photographers had to write captions to each of the frames as well, yeah.
1:23:10
In the end, in the magazine they used maybe one picture or two or none, yeah. Yeah.
1:23:17
And uh what was seen at that time as the best one or the most print-worthy is not necessary today uh or we wouldn't probably agree with it.
1:23:29
So we would choose something else.
1:23:31
But that is a lot of work and you only can do it from time to time because it's really tiring Yes. to do it right.
1:23:37
And that was the same with National Geographic and Life.
1:23:42
We are happy very happy that we could do this together with them.
1:23:46
And I think that the result was what we finally got.
1:23:50
But it's a very tiring many years of work.
1:23:55
Have you done any collections of magazines bound?
1:24:01
Oh yeah, we did did a couple of reprints.
1:24:02
There's like on Domus magazine a lot of in We did a couple of interior and architecture ones. Yeah.
1:24:09
On Domus magazine and um Arts and Architecture, this American magazine based in Los Angeles. And a few other ones.
1:24:18
Uh we did a six-volume series on the history of men's magazines.
1:24:24
It starts in the late 1900s and it stops maybe in the 1970s or so, yeah.
1:24:34
Uh, six But, it's funny that we did it. But, um yeah.
1:24:40
Have you done comic book compilations?
1:24:43
Yes, I mean we did a number of reprints now in big in a large size.
1:24:46
Uh, new one is coming up now on uh Tarzan by two excellent uh artists.
1:24:54
One called Hal Foster and Burne Hogarth.
1:24:56
And we did uh Little Nemo and Krazy Kat and uh we are doing Marvel and EC Comics and uh Yeah, we have a we getting a very substantial comic book program.
1:25:11
So, it's coming after 40 or plus years uh back to the roots. Yeah.
1:25:19
And what I like to do I'm I'm very excited about it because we know by now how we can do it that it looks as good as it would have looked if the technology and the money put into this at the time when it was published.
1:25:37
Yeah, if it could have been done this way.
1:25:39
So, it's even better than it was originally published.
1:25:43
I would say the artists they would be proud and happy if it would have been if they could have seen it in this way. I see. Yeah.
1:25:51
So, first of all, you know, and that's the reason why we have it in the bigger scale, the bigger size.
1:25:56
The magazines they downsized it to maybe half the size like it was the original drawings were like in centimeters let's say 50 cm each high for each page and it was published in the size of 20 yeah or whatever that It in inches. Yeah.
1:26:16
They did spend a lot of money to make the registers all fit and all of this.
1:26:22
But in an ideal world, you could have done it. Yeah.
1:26:25
So, what we do with and the reason why I tell you this is we don't want to alter something.
1:26:31
It's more like a restoration than a new book. process.
1:26:35
That's how I would describe it. Yeah. Yeah.
1:26:38
And we put a lot of time and money into this to make that look as good as it gets.
1:26:43
And I think that's what is regarded as well now.
1:26:48
Is there another publishing house that you're a great fan of? Oh, you know what?
1:26:52
Since I read every day and I buy every day books from everywhere, old ones, new ones, there are a number of outstanding publishing houses.
1:27:02
Let's say, yeah, Penguin, no doubt, has an amazing list and not only uh and they have this for decades.
1:27:07
It's for sure one of these publishing houses or one of these brands where you know as well, okay, if this name is on it, if you're interested in the subject or not, doesn't matter, but at least you have a standard which is an excellent one.
1:27:22
It's the same with a newspaper.
1:27:25
Let's say, if you read the New York Times or the Frankfurter Allgemeine or I don't know, the Le Monde or the Financial Times, at least you have a standard there and no matter which article you read and if let's say you're on holidays and you have nothing else to read, you read the entire newspaper.
1:27:47
So, but Penguin but here as an art publisher, the Thames & Hudson is a is a great publishing house, no doubt.
1:27:51
And they do it for 70 whatever 5 years.
1:27:57
And I admire stuff like that. Yeah.
1:28:00
Especially if you are in it for a long time and still independent, you know.
1:28:06
How is it different publishing something new versus publishing something that's out of print but has been printed in the past.
1:28:20
Well, if you make a reprint of a famous book, yeah, let's say the Luther Bible from 1600, 500 years old, yeah.
1:28:31
Uh what you have to do is you have to find the if possible the very best example because they're all slightly different.
1:28:39
It's not they're all the same.
1:28:39
It was just hundreds of years ago and some were colorized, others not.
1:28:45
Some are in a poor condition by now.
1:28:48
Anyhow, you have to make this research to get the best famous edition and then you have to work on the reproduction of this.
1:28:57
But basically, the book itself, to reproduce it uh beside of um the scans and uh as well how it's printed, the paper, and all this.
1:29:12
The work has been done by others many years ago.
1:29:15
What you can do kind of as a gatekeeper to make it uh look as good as it gets 500 years later, 250, or whatever, yeah. Yeah.
1:29:27
So, there is definitely some work involved, but the the first the real work was done.
1:29:31
That's why it's a famous edition.
1:29:35
Of course, you have to write a commentary and put it all into kind of the historic context.
1:29:40
But it is far less work than to uh do a new book and whatever the subject is because then you start from scratch and you will have to fill 500 empty pages, you know.
1:29:55
Typically, how long is the process from when you have an idea for a book until it's ready to be printed?
1:30:04
Look, the books we do, they have let's say from 100 to, let's say, 1,000 pages.
1:30:10
And it usually takes uh at least 12 months, but on average, I would say, 24 months to do something. Yeah. Yeah.
1:30:23
Then, of course, the production takes another 6 months, maybe or 3 months, yeah.
1:30:27
And do you tend to work with the same people over and over again? Yes, I love that.
1:30:29
I mean, if it's a good if it was a good experience, I love it. Yeah.
1:30:36
Have you ever published a Bible?
1:30:38
Yes, we did, even two versions.
1:30:38
A Gutenberg Bible and the Luther or Bible.
1:30:45
And you know, the Gutenberg Bible was the the very first printed book, and that's something of course of I incredible historic value.
1:30:53
Uh but it's not overwhelmingly illustrated or so.
1:30:57
I mean, it's more ornamental.
1:31:04
All of it uh And the Luther Bible, which was always regarded as the Bible for all the people, and it was the first which was as well not in Latin, but in in this case in German.
1:31:15
And that is uh wonderfully richly illustrated, you know, when we talked about Frank Frazetta.
1:31:22
This is all in between Bosch and Frazetta, and I don't know, the wildest stories you can't even imagine, or EC Comics.
1:31:32
And it's artistically very beautifully done, and as well they they're colored, which are just um amazing works of uh art, yeah.
1:31:42
Are all of your books image-based? Yes.
1:31:46
But that's the beginning, and from there on, we have to yeah, to contextualize it, to bring it in a in explain what it is, what you see, and where it comes from.
1:32:00
Let's say, if it's a monograph of an artist, yeah?
1:32:02
But you can uh start look at the pictures and uh from there on you might get hooked and want to understand where it comes from and what it is what you see, yeah?
1:32:15
I mean, to say it basically, yeah?
1:32:19
But I would say maybe our books have they are visually driven, no doubt at all.
1:32:28
And the visuals we try to make as close to the original as we can and keep the integrity of the picture, whether it's a photo or painting.
1:32:39
Not cut it and yeah, make it as a good as it is.
1:32:45
And that requires very often that you have to re-photograph everything in museums and wherever it is, because otherwise you cannot have the best possible reproduction.
1:33:01
We just finished a book on Dali, which is an oversize and it's a kind of an anniversary edition because we did our first Dali book 40 years ago.
1:33:11
And this year we have now a new book on Dali, a two-volume book on Dali coming out.
1:33:16
And I remember we had to re-photograph at least 150 paintings.
1:33:24
And once you do this, you have to often even have to take them out of the frames and it's for curators, I wouldn't say it's a nightmare, but it's definitely something of work.
1:33:35
definitely something they don't want to do uh too often, yeah?
1:33:38
Otherwise, you can't uh really make it work, you know?
1:33:43
How has the technology changed from the first Dali book 40 years ago to now in terms of printing, in terms of the getting renderings of the images?
1:33:54
I think it changed uh dramatically.
1:33:57
It doesn't say that you would not have had a great result depending on what you did.
1:34:03
They were I mean the years ago the let's say black and white photography books often looked better than they do today because some printing machines they are just not in existence anymore, yeah.
1:34:18
So, not everything what is new is better necessarily.
1:34:24
It's you know about it's about the the grain and the overall look maybe comparable in music if you have a an analog record compared to whatever is digital and some people prefer definitely this version. Yeah. for the other.
1:34:46
Color photography it's different I could say we have more possibilities and you can do better than years ago.
1:34:55
How do the books get written?
1:34:55
Are you pitched or do you commission them?
1:34:58
We pitched very often but rarely do we have the pitch go into the next stage.
1:35:06
So, the vast majority of our books we do we have a our idea how to make it work in these different formats and series, yeah.
1:35:16
And we commission the authors and the designers and the team to make this happen.
1:35:27
So, that's a different than most publishers, I would say. For sure, yeah.
1:35:31
I don't know anybody who does it like this. Yeah.
1:35:35
The writers and photographers that you work with are in the service of the vision which is starting with passion. Mhm. And that's unusual.
1:35:49
I think most publishers, they acquire things that come from the outside. Mhm.
1:35:59
Not that we have a formula, but we have our ideas how it should work and how it should look like. Yeah.
1:36:05
Whether it's good or not, different question that is.
1:36:07
But then we want to have it in a certain way and a certain style. Yeah.
1:36:12
And for some artists, or quite a number, that works well.
1:36:15
And for others, probably not. I don't know.
1:36:20
But the the name of the company, of the brand, was for me always more important than anything else. Yeah.
1:36:28
We try to keep this in our hands. Let's put it this way.
1:36:33
Do you think of the books as reference books? Uh yes, for sure. Yeah.
1:36:38
A majority of our books, I would say that it's a reference book. Yeah.
1:36:42
And once we work on a subject, we try to make it as comprehensive or as good as we can.
1:36:50
Doesn't say that it works like this all the time. But at least we try. It's the intention. The intention is there. Yeah.
1:36:58
But even after thousands of books, you still feel that? That's great.
1:37:02
Definitely, because um I'm really uh grateful and happy that I can be in this, for me, the most exciting job.
1:37:12
I did not lose any uh probably I have more um I'm more into it than I was even like 10, 20, or 30 years ago. Mhm.
1:37:24
Because right now I can focus more in it, because I'm in the wonderful situation that my oldest daughter, Malena, runs for the last 10 years all the operations.
1:37:35
And And so I can focus even better than I did before.
1:37:38
And I have a more as a sparring partner at the same time. Fantastic.
1:37:46
And that enables me as well to focus more on what I love to do in the first hand, and that is producing books, yeah. You know.
1:37:57
Yeah, how do you decide if a book is going to be a limited edition collector's item expensive book versus a mass market book?
1:38:07
Well, the subject defines it.
1:38:07
If you have if you work that say with a photographer you only can do it with people who have a worldwide recognition and an oeuvre behind it that supports this.
1:38:20
We often don't know how it will end up because we have to dive into it and look into it.
1:38:26
And so there was a a story I heard about MGM the film studio.
1:38:32
They said these people they started to edit the film and it was cut already, you know. Yeah. But I like this idea. Yeah, yeah.
1:38:42
Although it is a although it makes like not too much economic sense.
1:38:46
But at least at that point stage you understand what you're into.
1:38:53
And before at least for my perspective, I often do not know what I'm into. Yes.
1:39:00
Because it requires to go into new to to work on a new subject.
1:39:03
And uh only by doing so you understand and you see it maybe different or when you add stuff.
1:39:14
Or take out so um Yeah, we often edit our books very late.
1:39:21
Uh while they're done already after the first edit we make a complete different second one.
1:39:27
Do you get as excited about an idea today as you would have 30 years ago?
1:39:31
I would say so, no doubt.
1:39:31
I am excited about everything which is exciting.
1:39:37
What is exciting for me like a young boy.
1:39:39
Maybe I never kept my whatever being 10 years old. I I love it.
1:39:47
I love when the books arrive.
1:39:47
Every book is always sent to our office in Los Angeles daily.
1:39:55
And I love to keep it in my to feel it, to smell it, to look at the whatever you can check in the moment.
1:40:03
And I see them like uh I well, I wouldn't say children uh cuz I love the children more than anything else in my life.
1:40:10
My wife, my children, our friends, our dogs. But then the books come.
1:40:45
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