The Proper Ornaments

The Proper Ornaments is Marianne Mueller’s 2008 photobook from Edition Patrick Frey, a survey of her photographs of bodies and everyday surroundings that also prints her drawings for the first time.

Mueller uses the camera as a way of looking at herself and the world, at home and on trips, by day and by night. Her subjects are images of the body and the beauty she finds in ordinary things. The hardcover has 160 pages, with 80 color and 80 black-and-white images, a text by Martin Jaeggi and a design by Trix Wetter. Her own list of publications gives the full title as The Proper Ornaments, Combine 1995–2005.

Mueller was born in Zurich in 1966, studied at the Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst there from 1986 to 1991, and has taught at the Zurich University of the Arts since 2007. Her work also covers sculpture, installation, video and sound. The book continues the personal, intimate subjects of her first book, A Part of My Life, published by Scalo.