Sao Paulo ─ Aglaia Konrad

An artist’s book examining the city through a sharp and mechanical gaze, turning São Paulo into an unfamiliar and disorienting visual space.

Sao Paulo is an artist’s book by Austrian artist Aglaia Konrad, based in Belgium. It is one of a self-published series produced between 1995 and 1998, each centred on a specific city. Only two titles were realised in this series: Sao Paulo and Mexico City. Konrad’s conception of the book as a form of exhibition space and artistic medium would later be carried forward into Copy Cities, a twelve-volume artist book produced in an edition of only seven copies between 2003 and 2004.

In this work, the photographer’s presence—so strongly felt in Konrad’s later projects—recedes, giving way to a more detached and mechanical way of seeing the city. Through simple yet highly deliberate devices such as image reversals and an idiosyncratic sequence, the book evokes the sensation of wandering through an unknown urban landscape. Although photographs of São Paulo and Mexico City would later reappear in Elasticity, the editing of that publication differs radically from the concentrated structure of this book. In that contrast, one can already see Konrad’s distinctive practice of continually extending and reworking photographic material rather than bringing it to a fixed conclusion.

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Title: Sao Paulo
Artist: Aglaia Konrad
Publisher: Self-published, 1998
Format: Softcover, saddle stitched
Size: 297 × 210 × 20 mm
Pages: 34
Edition: First edition