Die Bücher

Die Bücher ("The Books") is a single-subject photographic project by the German artist Annette Kelm. In it, books themselves, photographed straight-on against neutral grounds, become the sole subject of the series.

Kelm's project extends her long-running method of isolating everyday and printed objects, from textiles to flags to found ephemera. She photographs them with a deadpan, studio-lit directness that treats surface, cover design, typography and material wear as historical evidence. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König published the 148-page hardcover in German in 2022. It presents the book-as-object as both a formal still life and a document of design and printing history across the volumes she selects.

Kelm studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and Städelschule Frankfurt. She has exhibited widely at institutions including the Kunsthalle Basel, the Institute of Contemporary Arts London and the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Her practice consistently treats photography's descriptive neutrality as a tool for close observation of the manufactured object. Die Bücher, focused entirely on books as things rather than texts, is a direct extension of that practice.