PRESSER, Beat. Coming Attractions. Basel: Inter Art Corporation, 1984.

PRESSER, Beat.
Coming Attractions.
Basel: Inter Art Corporation, 1984.

4to (295 × 205 mm), pp.[104]. 72 black-and-white photographs. Foreword by Ernest Schmidt, text by Gerard Wirtz. Design by Ernest Schmidt and Beat Presser. Plain endpapers. Black-and-white photo-illustrated glazed paper-covered boards; lightly rubbed, light toning to page edges and covers. Signed, dated and stamped by Presser on front free endpaper. Typed letter, signed on Presser’s headed paper laid in. Near-fine.

First edition, signed in the year of publication. Beat Presser is a Swiss photographer, born in 1952 in Basel. After working in film production companies, he pursued a career as a fashion and advertising photographer. In 1976, on the day before he returned home from a long trip to New York, Presser saw copies of Picture Newspaper being sold on the streets. Inspired, he returned to Switzerland and immediately began putting together his own publication called Palm Beach News. For the next issue the name was changed name to Village Cry and it was decided that each issue would be themed. In total he produced seven issues between November 1976 and winter 1977 (Palm Beach News and six issues of Village Cry, followed five years later by a one-off issue of Flitz Flying Magazine in 1982. A feature on Klaus Kinski in one of the issues led to Presser working on several projects with Kinski and Werner Herzog, including seven months spent in the Peruvian jungle photographing the making of Fitzcoraldo (1982).

Coming Attractions includes a selection of Presser’s work from Palm Beach News, Village Cry, and Flitz Flying Magazine, as well as other work made whilst working as creative director of an advertising agency in South-East Asia, and photographs of Klaus Kinski on the set of Fitzcarraldo.