Last week I paid a visit to &Foam and there I bought a copy of Car Crash Studies by the Danish photographer Nicolai Howalt.

Interesting enough a couple of years ago Swiss photographer Raffael Waldner published a similar book wih the same title Car Crash Studies: 2001-2010. Howalt made his series in 2009.

Where Howalt focuses on details like scratched paintwork, blown airbags and interiors, Waldner provides a more exhausting documentation of crashed cars. He also included shots of frontal and rear impacts and engines. Most of his subjects are fast and expensive cars from brands like Ferrari, Aston Martin, Porsche Lamborghini and Maserati. In Switzerland these kind of cars are not uncommon.

The pictures of car interiors in Howalts’ book are truly haunting and clearly show what impact a car crash can have. 

Both books are highly recommended. The Howalt book will be a bit more difficult to get as it is limited to 300 copies, but there are still copies available here and there. And if you dive into the subject do not forget to take it to a different level with Crash by J.G. Ballard or the adaptation of the novel by David Cronenberg.

The Afronauts, the widely acclaimed photo book by Cristina de Middel will be available on iPad and iPhone. De Middel received many offers from publishers to reprint this sought after photo book, but she decided against it. Now it will be available for any one who has either an iPad or an iPhone. It is interesting to see a growing interest in digital photo books.

The studio responsible for the production states on their site that they recreated the book for the iPad and iPhone in stead of simply providing an eBook or PDF:

We wanted to develop The Afronauts from scratch, that’s the reason that this book is not a PDF or EPUB3. Behind it there’s Objective C (iOS programming language). Our mission was to think the book again taking advantage of all the features iPads and iPhones give us.

The title will be available from April 17.

Self Publish Be Happy will publish a new book by Cristina de Middel. She is the author of the acclaimed photo book The Afronauts that topped all the favorite photo book lists. According to the site this project ‘challenges the archetype of street photography and the language and veracity of the photograph as a document’.

Here are a couple of spreads from Side by Side by artists Gilbert & George. This artist book was originally published in 1971 by Koenig Brothers and is now reprinted by Enitharmon Editions and Walther König in an edition of 2000 copies. I am not a big fan of reprints, but this book is such a fun read.

Great picture by photographer Chris Mottalini. I assume it is a house designed by Paul Rudolph as Mottalini has taken numerous pictures of Paul Rudolph homes and other buildings designed by this modernist architect.

I look forward to his upcoming publication about demolished Paul Rudolph homes After You Left They Took It Apart. According to his website it will be published in Spring by Columbia College Press. It is a great series although it is rather sad that the houses featured in the series are all demolished because no one seemed to care about them.

Love the cover of the upcoming regular edition of Life’s a Beach by Martin Parr.

These lists include some interesting selections by Martin Parr, Christian Patterson, Bertien van Manen, Thomas Seelig, Lia Wolf, Jeffrey Ladd, Katja Stuke, Regina Anzenberger and others.

Sean O’Hagan from The guardian.