Bernd Stiegler

Arthur Conan Doyle is best known as the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. However, his works are far more extensive than these familiar works. They include historical novels, political pamphlets, historical studies, science fiction novels and, last but not least, numerous publications on spiritualism. Photography plays a central role in his work and gives rise to a highly peculiar world of imagination. The photographs allow us to take a look at the world in around 1900 with all its oddities. For Conan Doyle's contemporaries, Sherlock Holmes was a real figure. To Conan Doyle, photographs of elves, the dead and ghosts testified to their existence. This book collects these images, along with the imaginarium that surrounds them.

The first exploration of Arthur Conan Doyle, photography and spiritualism Offers the first complete history of Conan Doyle's relationship with photography Provides a cultural history of photography from 1880 to 1930 Covers a wide range of topics including amateur photography, 'shock' photos, Spiritism, fairy photos Arthur Conan Doyle is best known as the author of the Sherlock Holmes stories. However, his works are far more extensive than these familiar works. They include historical novels, political pamphlets, historical studies, science fiction novels and, last but not least, numerous publications on spiritualism. Photography plays a central role in his work and gives rise to a highly peculiar world of imagination. The photographs allow us to take a look at the world in around 1900 with all its oddities. For Conan Doyle's contemporaries, Sherlock Holmes was a real figure. To Conan Doyle, photographs of elves, the dead and ghosts testified to their existence. This book collects these images, along with the imaginarium that surrounds them.

English summary: Immediately after the 'birth' of photography in the year 1839, people began exploring the many technical and aesthetical opportunities made possible by this new medium. This ground-breaking study opens a new chapter in the history of photography by analyzing early photomontages and by overcoming the classic concept of single individual pictures. It is a lavish and surprising book that introduces various models of the construction of reality, realism and objectivity in photography. The book encompasses the whole spectrum of photomontage in the 19th century and includes abundant examples, including many that were previously unpublished. It is an essential companion to the history of 19th century photography. German description: Bereits unmittelbar nach der Geburt der Fotografie 1839 wurden technische und asthetische Moglichkeiten des neuen Mediums in ihrer ganzen Vielfalt erkundet. Indem dieses Buch fruhe Montagebilder auswertet, uberwindet es das klassische Bildkonzept des einfachen Einzelbildes. Die Autoren schaffen ein opulentes und uberraschendes Bilderbuch, das unterschiedliche Modelle der Konstruktion von Realitat, Realismus und Wirklichkeit in der Fotografie vorstellt. Zahlreiche Beispiele reprasentieren das gesamte Spektrum der Fotomontage im 19. Jahrhundert; teilweise werden sie in diesem Buch zum ersten Mal publiziert. Die Autoren schlagen so ein neues Kapitel in der Geschichte der Fotografie auf.

Armchair travel may seem like an oxymoron. Doesn't travel require us to leave the house? And yet, anyone who has lost herself for hours in the descriptive pages of a novel or the absorbing images of a film knows the very real feeling of having explored and experienced a different place or time without ever standing up from the couch. No passport, no currency, no security screening required-the luxury of armchair travel is accessible to us all. In Traveling in Place, Bernd Stiegler celebrates this convenient, magical means of transport in all its many forms. Organized into twenty-one "legs" - or short chapters - Traveling in Place begins with a consideration of Xavier de Maistre's 1794 Voyage autour de ma chambre, an account of the forty-two-day "journey around his room" Maistre undertook as a way to entertain himself while under house arrest. Stiegler is fascinated by the notion of exploring the familiar as though it were completely new and strange. He engages writers as diverse as Roussel, Beckett, Perec, Robbe-Grillet, Cortazar, Kierkegaard, and Borges, all of whom show how the everyday can be brilliantly transformed. Like the best guidebooks, Traveling in Place is more interested in the idea of travel as a state of mind than as a physical activity, and Stiegler reflects on the different ways that traveling at home have manifested themselves in the modern era, from literature and film to the virtual possibilities of the Internet, blogs, and contemporary art. Reminiscent of the pictorial meditations of Sebald, but possessed of the intellectual playfulness of Calvino, Traveling in Place offers an entertaining and creative Baedeker to journeying at home.