“Scenes from every Land” by Geneva artist Peter Stoffel is the reprint of a ready made. Stoffel found the book of the same name by Gilbert H. Grosvenor, the third edition published in 1912 by the National Geographic Society in New York, at a Berlin flea market a few years ago.
The illustrated book promised in its subtitle to depict people, natural phenomena and animal life from all parts of the world. However, the edition the artist bought lacked all the images. The former owner had neatly cut them out and left only a skeleton of the book. Parts of individual pictures remained visible on the backs of the removed photographs, as did fragments of the texts and numerous captions, which in turn were supplemented with explanations.
The appeal of this publication, which has been badly affected by the artist as an illustrated book, is obvious. The manifold pictorial world that the volume still promises today must be created in the mind when leafing through it. And this is also where the attraction and danger for the viewer lies: References to deserts and glaciers, animals and people, customs and architecture, and so on, take the reader on completely new paths of perception, allowing the world to emerge anew while leafing through the pages, as it were, while at the same time presenting us with precisely those stereotypes that the volume showed before it was edited and which are permanently stored in our heads.
“Scenes from every Land” is the facsimile of the illustrated book purchased at the flea market. The exquisite publication is complemented by a text by the Berlin author and artist Tirdad Zolghadr.