GERHARD RICHTER, Wald, 2008 [artist’s book]
24,6 x 17 x 3,4 cm
offset, German language, 396 pp., ill., 1.3 kilograms
HC with dust jacket
edition 2000
published by Walter Koenig Buchhandlung, Cologne, Germany
mint
€ 520,- plus € 18,- Track & Trace registered mail
inv.GRich 714_979

Gerhard Richter’s artist’s book Wald assembles 286 photographs that he has taken since 2005 in a forest Hahnwald close to Cologne. These photographs focus on fallen trees and branches lying on the woodland’s ground, i.e. photos on vertical tree trunks and horizontally piled logs or diagonally broken branches.

Opposite to the typology of the photographs, Gerhard Richter used a text taken from Waldung – Magazin für Wald, Wandern, Wissen, No. 1/2006, a German magazine about forestry. The text is composed of computer generated ad randomness, without syntax or linguistic logic.
Gerhard Richter removed proper nouns and passages. The resulting and abstracted text is still recognizable as a text about forests in terms of vocabulary. He divided the type area into seven horizontal strips, which he arranged according to a strict concept, but subverted it through individual interventions. The 106 differently composed pages continuously filled with text, only to shrink again after the only fully occupied page in the middle.
It is a fading in and out of type images. Richter roughly sorted the photographs into groups:
– delicate branches
– horizontally lying trunks
– diagonally or vertically growing trees.

History of prices:
LLU Buch Service/Lars Lutzer Antiquariat, Wahlstedt, Germany April 2025 € 1.190,-
Antiquariat im Baldreit, Baden-Baden, Germany April € 785,-
Booklooker, Greiz, Germany April 2025 € 340,- (website: ‘slight signs of wear’)
London Lane Company, London UK October 2024 € 787,-
Dividing Line Books, Ridgewood NY, USA October 2024 € 282,-
Amazon, December 2020 US$ 450.-
www.store.bookdummypress.com, May 2019 US$ 300.-
Amazon, May 2019 US$ 450.-
Amazon, July 2016 between US$ 430.- and US$ 605.-