KOOIKER, Paul - Nude Animal Cigar - AS SIGNED COPY!

Background information

"Paul KOOIKER (*1964) is one of the most interesting conceptual photographers currently working in the Netherlands. Although his work consists exclusively of photographic images, he is less a photographer than a sculptor and installation artist. His fascination with intriguing themes such as voyeurism, innocence and clichés leads him to create fictitious collections of images whose origin, subject and meaning are extremely uncertain. In his photo volume 'Nude Animal Cigar', created at the invitation of the Hague Museum of Photography, he looks back on a twenty-year career. The result is a bewildering collection of two hundred photographic works in which images of nudes and animals are interspersed with close-ups of the countless cigars he has smoked in his studio over the years.
The Dutch photo artist is not interested in perfect photography, the value of his work lies not in the individual photographs (which are sometimes overexposed, blurred by camera movement or grainy), but in what he does with them after production - the subsequent process of selection and manipulation.
In the initial phase of his creative process, he is consciously a 'bad' photographer, producing a lot of exploratory material, often comprising hundreds of images. He then approaches this material as a visual artist and creates 'collections' in the form of three-dimensional installations and photo books. These fictitious collections look as if they have been found somewhere or have turned up in an old suitcase left in an attic for decades. To ensure their credibility, he pays meticulous attention to the internal consistency of form and style. This stands in sharp contrast to the often enigmatic and vaguely disturbing content of his series." (freely translated text, © Den Haag Fotomuseum)

Reception, content

"In the (out-of-print) photo volume 'Nude Animal Cigar' by Paul KOOIKER, what's inside is what's on the outside. Nudes, animals and cigars. Sixty-four times in a row and always in that order. Sixty-four mini sequences with surprising formal and contextual references.
A crazy book that gets you all mixed up but is also a lot of fun." (© Hannes WANDERER, 25books)

About Dutch photo artist, Paul KOOIKER (b.1964)

Photo books by and with works by Paul KOOIKER