Hello everyone, my name is Maria Sturm and I will be sharing some nice projects with you for the next week! I’m excited and glad to be part of this!

Last year I’ve been chosen for a month long artist in residence and workshop guided by Magnum photographer Antoine d’Agata at Atelier de Visu in Marseille. By then I was still a student at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld and a bit bored from getting the same critiques over and over again. Everybody – fellow students and professors had already known my work for a couple of years, so I was super happy to go to Marseille and get new input and feedback and critiques. It turned out to be one of the best times I had, not only input wise, but we were a group of 13 students from all over the world living together and actually we all got along very well, which I found kinda magical. I kept in touch with some of the people there and some of them became really good friends. So today I’d like to introduce you to my friend Dani Pujalte’s work – I will show you the project ”13000 Bouches-du-Rhône”, that he realized during our workshop in Marseille.

Here’s a little something something about Dani and his work and feel free to also check out his website:

Dani Pujalte (b.1985, Barcelona, Spain) lives currently in Barcelona. He works as a freelance photographer and social documentary artist. He travels around working on his own projects who revolves around landscape exploration in ambiguous spaces as a tool to tackle cultural and social issues.
He was recently finalist of the 19th edition of the FotoPres grant with the project Cultural Containers (WIP) and selected in Descubrimientos PHE’13. His works have been exhibited at Fundación Fotocolectania, Atelier de Visu, Spazio Nea, Galeria Setba, Torroella de Montgrí and FAD.

“13000 Bouches-du-Rhône gathers, by means of the landscape, my experience in this French department, where I carry out a workshop. My uncle dies. Sadness and loneliness add up to the pressure of creating a project. Five days before the end of the workshop, I don’t have anything. I leave Marseille for a few days. Driving dissolves me between landscapes and I think about him; little by little I calm down. Images appear in the distance, cold, turning into a reflection of my state: people who occupy a space and whose presence remains absorbed by the environment. This is my experience, my sensation of having been in those places. Being without really being. This is my homage to Loulou. ”

And maybe you’d like to check out the other participants websites:

Cemre Yesil, Istanbul
Nadia Mounier, Cairo
Marion Normand, Arles
Timothy Nordhoff, Swansea
Michal Adamovský, Prague
Maria Sprowls, New York
Lasse Kofod, Copenhagen

Lorenzo Meloni, Rome
Smin Kim, Seoul
Christina Nijm, Ramallah
Mathilde Magnee, Marseille

The last four people unfortunatley don’t have a website and I’m in love with Lorenzo’s work, such a pity his site is under construction!

Maria Sturm will be guest-blogging on our site for the following seven days. Maria was born in Romania in 1985, grew up in Augsburg (!) and graduated in 2012 in photography and media from University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld, Faculty of Art and Design. She has interned at milk studios and creative exchange agency, New York in 2011. Her book Be Good about the series of underage married kids in Romania has won several awards and prices, and her work has been shown widely. We are happy to have her and say: Welcome, Maria!

For the upcoming seven days, we show the series Be Good from Maria Sturm about underage marriage in Romania. The above image is featured in issue 6.

Proceed to Artist Feature

We have a brand-new partner, Still magazine from Berlin. They combine literature and photography in their publication, but focus on literature, and we are happy about some exchange about quite similar interests :)

Still is currently calling for papers and pictures, you can submit your work here: post@stillonline.de

For more information about the magazine: stillonline.de/uberstill

Two more days to go at I never read Art book fair in Basel. Leon Kirchlechner is representing our team there, meeting nice people, having good talks… We hope to see you there, too!

Christiane Wöhler will be guest-blogging on our site for the upcoming six days. Christiane studied visual arts at Bauhaus University Weimar and is currently living and working in Leipzig. Her work has been exhibited and published by magazines such as SZ Magazin, Zeit Magazin, and many more. We are happy to have her and say: Welcome, Christiane!

We will present an excerpt from Christiane Wöhler’s intimate work in our Artist-Feature until next wednesday. The above image is featured in issue 6.

Proceed to Artist-Feature

Claudio Ricci, Simon Karlstetter, Matthias Lohscheidt, Leon Kirchlechner

We want to use the special occasion of Leon Kirchlechner being our Guest-Blogger for this week to give you some updates concerning the team behind Der Greif. We have a fresh, new constant member, Claudio Ricci, who has been a close friend of ours for many years and now is helping us with some issues as economics, calculation and strategy. Now Leon, Simon and Matti can devote theirselves to the creative part.

Besides working on Der Greif, all members are involved in different individual projects and activities. It’s worth taking a look at our personal portfolios ;)

www.leonkirchlechner.com
www.simonkarlstetter.de
www.mlohscheidt.de

We are happy to be able to work on various art projects and still have the chance to work together with friends.

Don’t hesitate to contact us, we are always available for workshops and talks and happy to answer your questions.

Strolling along the booths of the Vienna Photo Book Festival I found several great books.
Some of my favourites are:

Milou Abel: Ik ben jou
PETRA RAUTENSTRAUCH: PEGGY’S POETRY CIRCUS
Rimaldas Viksraitis: Naked
Grégoire Eloy: A Black Matter
MARTEN LANGE: ANOTHER LANGUAGE

By the way I would like to mention that the festival was definitely one of the best I visited so far: lots of interesting publishers, wonderfully relaxed atmosphere, nice surrounding, perfectly organised,  … great music :) and last but not least we made some good friends!

Dear friends! Dear Greif-blog readers! I’m glad to also have the possibilty to make some posts on the Greif website during the next few days. Right now, Calin, Simon and me are on a little roadtrip promoting Der Greif, dienacht and my first photobook.

We just arrived in Vienna. And as we gonna be at the ViennaPhotoBookFestival tomorrow and on sunday, I had to think about a great documentary, made by Michael Kollmann, curator of the Ostlicht Gallery, where the Festival will take place. Michael is a big fan and collector of photo books and magazines. It’s really worth taking a look at the public library he set up in the gallery.

The documentary is about Allan Porter’s photomagazine »camera«. There are some interesting lessons to learn about independent publishing… Enjoy!