Umschläge

Umschläge, German for "covers," is Peter Piller's deadpan study of a single Cold War-era publication reduced to its outer wrapper.

The book reproduces the front and back covers of Armeerundschau ("Army Review"), the periodical published for the East German National People's Army between 1956 and 1990. Each front cover typically portrays a piece of military hardware or combatants in action; each back cover, by contrast, carries a photograph of a civilian woman in the style of a pin-up. Piller strips the covers of surrounding text and sequences them without commentary, letting the recurring pairing of weapon and woman make its own argument about the propaganda machinery that produced it. The book is offset-printed in color, staple-bound, and was published in an edition of 1000.

Piller's practice is built on the systematic archiving, sorting, and recombination of found photographs, drawn from newspaper picture archives, real-estate listings, and official publications like Armeerundschau. Umschläge belongs to a larger ongoing project, the Archiv Peter Piller, in which found-image categories are catalogued and exhibited as evidence of the visual logic embedded in bureaucratic and state photography.