Eastern & Oriental Express ─ Stefanie Moshammer

A photobook combining research, fiction and digital image-making to evoke the dreamlike world of the Eastern & Oriental Express.

Eastern & Oriental Express is a photobook by Austrian artist Stefanie Moshammer, produced as part of Belmond’s artist book series. Invited to photograph the Eastern & Oriental Express in 2023, Moshammer turned her attention to the legendary train that runs through Malaysia’s breathtaking landscapes, linking Singapore to tropical rainforest and historic towns.

Moshammer’s practice is known for exploring stereotypes and cultural myths through highly personal and nuanced perspectives on place and subject. Blending fiction and subjective storytelling with research-based methods, she repeatedly develops unexpected visual languages through which social dynamics and human relationships come into view. In this book, she combines stills from short videos shot on an iPhone with cropped, blurred and pixelated screenshots gathered from the internet. These layered strategies give the work a dreamlike texture and a timeless atmosphere, drawing attention to the details of the train while leading the viewer toward a wider poetic world beyond them.

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Title: Eastern & Oriental Express
Artist: Stefanie Moshammer
Publisher: RVB Books, 2024
Format: Hardcover, embossed and printed linen cover
Size: 240 × 168 mm
Pages: 127
Language: English
Edition: First edition
ISBN: 978-2-492175-50-3