Umschläge

Umschläge is a numbered special edition by the German artist Peter Piller, published by Dashwood Books, New York, in a run of 1,000 copies.

The title, German for "covers" or "envelopes," refers to the paper sleeves used to store and label negatives and prints in newspaper photo archives. They have been the raw material of Piller's practice since the early 2000s, when he began collecting, sorting and recontextualizing vernacular press photography discarded by regional German newspapers. The body of work behind this edition was shown at Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, in 2013, the year credited on the book's photographs; this special edition followed in 2014, designed by Hans Seeger.

Piller trained as a photographer before turning to appropriation and archival research as his primary method, building series that mine the visual habits of institutional and amateur image-making. Umschläge extends that project from the photographs themselves to the everyday paper systems that once organized and preserved them.