Photo Adventures: Don’t take photos, make photos!
Jan Von Holleben
Thames & Hudson
Text by Monte Packham
Softcover
96 pages
187 x 251 mm
2019
ISBN 9780500651575
The Dr. Seuss of photography, Jan von Holleben, shows children how to bend reality with no more than a smartphone and a playful outlook. Photo Adventures is an activity book by photographer and professional fun-maker Jan von Holleben, who reveals the secret to bending reality using nothing more than a smartphone and a playful approach. With the aid of props lying about the house, and a generous dose of imagination, children will discover how to fly like a superhero by turning the ground into the sky; create a ‘brain portrait’ of what’s hiding in their heads by re-photographing an existing photo; put their parents up a pole using tricks of perspective; devise an impossible pinball machine by combining some junk with a tight picture crop; and transform siblings into one-eyed, three-legged monsters with only a mirror and a sharp camera angle!
(Source: https://www.thamesandhudson.com/products/photo-adventures)
About the Artist
Born in 1977 and brought up in the southern German countryside, Jan von Holleben lived most of his youth in an alternative commune and identifies a strong connection between the development of his photographic work and the influence of his parents, a cinematographer and child therapist. At the age of 13, he followed his father’s photographic career by picking up a camera and experimenting with all sorts of „magical tricks“, developing his photographic imagination and skills with friends and family and later honing his technique in commercial settings. After pursuing studies in teaching children with disabilities at the Pädagogische Hochschule in Freiburg, he moved to the UK, earned a degree in Theory and History of Photography at Surrey Institute of Art and Design, and became submerged within the London photographic scene, where he worked as picture editor, art director and photographic director. He quickly set up two photographic collectives, Young Photographers United and photodebut, followed more recently by the Photographer’s Office. His photographic work focuses on the ‘homo ludens’ – the man who learns through play. It is built from an integration of pedagogical theory with his own personal experiences and everyday adventures.
https://www.janvonholleben.com
(Source: https://www.janvonholleben.com/about)
About the Publisher
Thames & Hudson was founded in 1949 by Walter and Eva Neurath. Their passion and mission was to create a ‘museum without walls’ and to make accessible to a large reading public the world of art and the research of top scholars. To reflect its international outlook the name for the company linked the rivers flowing through London and New York, represented in its logo by two dolphins symbolizing friendship and intelligence, one facing east, one west, suggesting a transatlantic connection.
https://www.thamesandhudson.com
(Source: https://www.thamesandhudson.com/pages/about-us)
