Lewis Baltz

Published in Paris in 1993, Lewis Baltz pairs a compact survey of Baltz's photographs with a single sustained essay by the French critic Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, one of the closest European readings of Baltz's cool, procedural landscapes.

Issued by Éditions de la Différence as the seventh volume in its "Classiques du XXIe siècle" series, the hardcover gathers black-and-white plates spanning Baltz's industrial parks and tract housing alongside Lamarche-Vadel's French text. Its release coincided with Rule Without Exception, the artist's retrospective at the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris that same year, which went on to travel to venues in the United States.

Lamarche-Vadel, a novelist and critic active in French debates on photography and conceptual art, places Baltz among the American photographers who turned documentary technique into a form of institutional critique. The book is one of the few sustained European readings of Baltz's work published during his lifetime.