Augury
Monograph with Teri Varhol, Antics 2023
16 × 23,5 cm, 120 pages, 200 copies
Softcover / Dos-à-dos binding
Text by Krasimira Butseva
Collector’s Edition 20 copies, Clamshell box (with two signed archival prints)
ISBN 978-958-4950-43-7 (out of print)
Elena Helfrecht and Teri Varhol’s debut photobook is a compilation of their two stories, The Swallow and The Cage. These act like telegrams between worlds, merging distant places into a single space as the pair navigate Prague, London, Bavaria, and the Alps during the global lockdowns of 2020 and 2021.
In Augury, sublime landscapes and natural phenomena take on the surreal and fantastic as the artists capture them through layers of mysticism. Iconography and superstition are woven together to create visceral narratives of distorted consciousness, nature’s mutations, and the constant tension between light and dark, inside and outside.
As writer Krasimira Butseva observes in the book’s introduction, the viewer is led through crosses marking the stalks of trees, windows concealed, a nest of wasps, mist, an opening in the sky, an author's wound, and an onion tree.
In Augury, sublime landscapes and natural phenomena take on the surreal and fantastic as the artists capture them through layers of mysticism. Iconography and superstition are woven together to create visceral narratives of distorted consciousness, nature’s mutations, and the constant tension between light and dark, inside and outside.
As writer Krasimira Butseva observes in the book’s introduction, the viewer is led through crosses marking the stalks of trees, windows concealed, a nest of wasps, mist, an opening in the sky, an author's wound, and an onion tree.
Exhibitions
Belfast Photo Festival 2022 (UK) · Photo Vogue Festival 2021 (IT)
“[...] The camera catches the sight, slices the seconds. The photograph instantly retains the beauty, the picturesque, the pleasure of the astonishing views. However, in the images encountered throughout this publication, something further transpires. [...] There is a specific type of distress that begins to be shaped by the sublime, as one gazes at the endless landscapes. For a brief moment, it seems as if the infinite panorama will capture and swallow us too.” — Krasimira Butseva, Walks Through the (Post-)Pandemic Sublime and Everyday
Media
Vogue · GUP Magazine · Port Magazine · PHMuseum · Conceptual Projects · Schwarzweissmagazin #153 · Kwerfeldein
