Dayanita Singh is the winner of the 2022 Hasselblad Award. With this book, the internationally celebrated artist Dayanita Singh returns to her artistic beginnings. In the catalogue for the first comprehensive retrospective, the first stop of which is hosted by the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin, Singh presents early works from her 1980-1986 oeuvre. From hundreds of slides and contact prints, the artist made a selection of personal and powerful black-and-white photographs. As a rediscovery and look into her own past, the theme of the "archive", central to Singh's work, takes on a central dimension here. The media of photography, installation and book intertwine in Singh's work in a unique way, which is why this book also features recent photographs from the exhibition.

There is more to numbers than sums; they can also conceal histories, too. In this case, world-famous architectural history. For five years the renowned Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery), designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, was closed to the public for renovation. Nevertheless, the photographer Michael Wesely was able to accommodate “four guests� inside the iconic building: four cameras, each one pointing in a different direction, were installed on the ceiling. Every day they took between 360 and 730 pictures with an exposure time of 90 seconds each. Edited into bewitching montages, this fascinating synopsis allows readers to envision the building’s metamorphosis as it was undergoing renovations. The long exposure time is an aesthetic coup, for ephemeral, restless, rapid movements contrast with the still, timeless quality of the architecture, presenting a sophisticated interplay of identity and change. This book is published on the occasion of the re-opening of the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, August 2021. It is a slightly altered special edition of the original numbered edition of April 2021.