Unobtainium

13/09/2026

Magnum photographer Marc Riboud travelled the world, from Europe to the Middle East and from Vietnam to the United States. Repelled by violence, indifferent to the pursuit of ‘events’, yet irresistibly drawn by the desire to see, he was a reporter under the spell of life itself. Whether covering the Cultural Revolution or the Soviet Union before perestroika, he waited for the inner truth to ‘rise to the surface of things’. These photographs reveal his intense awareness of the innate power of each image.

13/09/2026

in Palermo, Letizia Battaglia (1935–2022) took up journalism as a single mother, but discovered that it was easier to sell articles if she could also supply photographs. She became a news photographer for L’Ora, a Sicilian daily newspaper that took a stand against the Mafia and its political and economic connections.

Between 1976 and 1991, she was a witness to some of the bloodiest events in Italian history, including the killing of judges, police officers and politicians. While these images brought her international recognition, she strongly opposed the label of ‘Mafia photographer’ and believed that her aim was to seek out life. She built up a many-sided portrait of her Sicilian homeland, developing a special sensitivity to women, girls and young children, and a deep empathy with those living in poverty. Her work stands as proof that both joy and suffering are part of the experience of being in the world.

12/09/2026

Ruth Orkin (1921–85) always dreamed of becoming a filmmaker, and although that ambition was thwarted until later in her career, she quickly found other ways of engaging with the world of images. She was given her first camera at the age of ten and by the age of seventeen, she was cycling across America from Los Angeles to New York, documenting her trip in albums of annotated photographs. In the early 1940s she settled in New York, joining the Photo League and making her name with photo stories for major magazines such as Life, Look and This Week.

In images that range from celebrity portraits to bird’s-eye views from her apartment window, from children at play to the experiences of a lone American tourist in Italy, Orkin’s photography always retains a cinematic sense of the passage of time and allows the humanity and charisma of her subjects to shine through.

12/09/2026

Claude Cahun (1894–1954), the chosen name of the artist born Lucy Schwob, was best known in her lifetime as a writer but built up a remarkable body of photographic work that only came to prominence after her death.

Politically active and involved with a wide circle of artists and intellectuals, including the Surrealists, Cahun followed her own rules in both life and art. She is best known for her strikingly staged self-portraits, in which she used costumes, makeup and technical effects to tackle themes of identity and self-representation. Her love of symmetry, mirroring, repurposing and retouching was also reflected in her approach to other styles of photography, including portraiture, photomontage and still-life tableaux.

Whether working alone or in collaboration with her life partner Marcel Moore (born Suzanne Malherbe), Claude Cahun was a pioneering figure in the aesthetics of modernity who never stopped crossing boundaries of gender and genre.

11/09/2026

Brooklyn-born Louis Stettner (1922–2016) first took up a camera as a teenager and went on to establish an extraordinary career that lasted almost eighty years. After photographing life on the streets of New York, he joined the famous Photo League and befriended Sid Grossman and Weegee. In the Second World War he served as a combat photographer, and the fight against fascism strengthened his faith in Marxism and the working class.

Living between New York and Paris, he amassed a huge body of work that combined elements of New York street photography with lyrical humanism in the French style. His subjects were many and varied: passengers on the subway and tourists in the streets, Spanish fishermen and American beatniks, protests and demonstrations, landscapes and trees. But no matter where he found himself, he looked for beauty in the everyday and never lost his fundamental compassion and solidarity with ordinary people.

09/09/2026

Menentukan buku foto favorit dari Harry Gruyaert mungkin bukan hal yang mudah, karena karya dia relatif konsisten secara visual. Mungkin kalo kami harus memilih 2 buku yang paling kami s**ai pilihannya akan jatuh pada "Morocco" dan "Homeland". Saya juga pernah berbincang dengan salah satu pelanggan kami yang memilih "Between Worlds" sebagai salah satu karya favoritnya dengan alasannya sendiri.

Buku terbarunya "New York" sebenarnya terasa kuat juga, tapi mengingat telah begitu banyak karya buku dari fotografer-fotografer lainnya juga mengangkat kota New York sebagai tema utamanya kadang membuat saya berpikir apakah mungkin Harry Gruyaert bertemu dengan Joel Meyerowitz atau Garry Winogrand di jalanan. Saya sendiri membaca buku foto tentang New York dari masa ke masa dan dengan berbagai fokus dan pendekatan, rasanya seperti telah berkunjung ke New York berkali-kali. Kalo sudah begini biasanya yang akan menjadi pembeda adalah kekhasan visual fotografernya.

Bagi kalian yang butuh pratinjau buku New York ini, silahkan cek video berikut ya. Cheers.

An immersion into the vibrant world of Harry Gruyaert’s New York....

03/09/2026

Mengikuti sejarah panjang buku fotografi seniman wanita yang memotret dirinya sendiri sebagai caranya berekspresi. Mari Katayama terasa unik karena ia tidak sebatas menggunakan fotografi saja tapi juga media lainnya dalam membentuk karya self portraitnya.

Synthesis oleh Mari Katayama masih tersedia disini.

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/14uZ92y2knQ/

02/09/2026

Inhabiting Light – Dialogue on the Edge of the Everyday World
by Masatake Shinohara & Rinko Kawauchi

https://youtu.be/cl98yO61YJo

“In reality, we experience something. When we experience that something, it is important to ask how it came into existence in this world. (…) As I continued the exchange with Kawauchi, I came to the realization that what was at stake in the responses to the photographs was the act of directing the movements of thought towards the dimension in which things happen: that is, the place from which reality emerges. Such a dimension lies hidden behind the surface of the everyday world in which we ordinarily live.” – from the afterward. There, you will see the different sensations and emotions surfacing from the photographs, and the line of thought unfolding through such manifestations are given life as words. The text and photography interrelate to explore the depths of “light” as a subject.

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Dialog karya berupa tulisan dan foto antara Masatake Shinohara dan Rinko Kawauchi.

Dalam beberapa buku terakhir Rinko Kawauchi menggunakan lebih banyak teks dalam karya bukunya dan juga berkolaborasi dengan orang lain seperti "As it Is" (yang berisi tulisannya sendiri menghadapi perubahan menjadi seorang ibu), "Here and Now" (dengan puisi dari Shuntaro Tanikawa). Konsep dialog menggunakan foto pun telah dilakukannnya dalam buku "Gift" bersama Terri Weifenbach.

This publication is structured as a dialogue of texts and photograp...

01/09/2026

Bulan ini kami mendapatkan tawaran untuk memanfaatkan sebuah ruang di Pasar Modern Intermoda BSD untuk digunakan sebagai tempat aktivitas Unobtainium oleh salah seorang pelanggan kami, Pak Imam.

Jujur saja, kami belum kebayang akan seperti apa aktivitas yang akan kami coba gulirkan disini. Beliau sendiri terinspirasi Raws Syndicate di Bandung atau Guearigaleri yang berkegiatan di dalam pasar tapi kayaknya kami sudah bukan tipe yang s**a nongkrong sampai larut malam lagi. Kami kok sulit ya membayangkan bisa beroperasi seperti mereka.

Mengingat konsep book cafe lagi hangat-hangatnya saat ini sempat tergoda membayangkan ke arah tersebut, tapi di Intermoda sendiri sudah banyak usaha yang bergerak di bidang makanan dan minuman. Toko buku lain pun sudah ada di lantai atas. Kami pikir kami akan tetap fokus di wilayah yang kami sudah pahami saja dengan menjadikannya sebagai book cave alias gua buku yang bisa dimasuki siapapun yang tertarik dengan buku fotografi, seni, dan sinema.

Kami akan mulai mengisi ruangan ini setelah Jipfest/ IPF tanggal 18-20 September mendatang. Tunggu saja kabar terbaru mengenai hal ini.

Ruangan pun mungkin bisa dipakai untuk diskusi dan pameran kecil. Mengingat tempat seperti ini sulit ditemukan di daerah Serpong, yuk kita hidupkan bersama titik kecil ini. Silahkan berkabar saja ya kalo ada ide kegiatan yang ingin dilakukan.

22/08/2026

Inhabiting Light – Dialogue on the Edge of the Everyday World By Masatake Shinohara & Rinko Kawauchi

This publication is structured as a dialogue of texts and photographs. Rinko Kawauchi replies with photographs to the text by the philosopher Masatake Shinohara, which is again responded to by Shinohara’s words. Upon writing, Shinohara says that he repeatedly recalled Kawauchi’s words: “what is important about a photo is the way one takes it, rather than what one takes.”

 

“In reality, we experience something. When we experience that something, it is important to ask how it came into existence in this world. (…) As I continued the exchange with Kawauchi, I came to the realization that what was at stake in the responses to the photographs was the act of directing the movements of thought towards the dimension in which things happen: that is, the place from which reality emerges. Such a dimension lies hidden behind the surface of the everyday world in which we ordinarily live.” – from the afterward. There, you will see the different sensations and emotions surfacing from the photographs, and the line of thought unfolding through such manifestations are given life as words.  The text and photography interrelate to explore the depths of “light” as a subject.