+ - 0 (“plus minus null”) is a facsimile of a unique, handmade artist’s book crafted by Volker Heinze in 1986. Its photos are the result of the young Heinze’s decision to radically capture the world around him—be it cityscapes, rooms casts in warm artificial light, friends or simply objects sitting on a table. Working against the removed perspective of documentary photography, Heinze employs color not as a tool of realism but with experimental flair, and plays with focus and the inevitable “mistakes” of analogue film—all to create an original aesthetic born from the idiosyncrasies of the photographic medium.

Heinze originally presented this body of work in two forms: as the large installation The Appearance of the Familiar, composed of individual photos pinned to the wall in the influential 1986 exhibition “Remnants of the Authentic” at Museum Folkwang in Essen. And as + - 0—with its experimental layout, leaves of tracing paper with hand-painted quotes such as “To search for reality is like diving for pearls in an aquarium”, and a booklet with excerpts from Martin Kippenberger’s 241 Bildtitel zum Ausleihen—now to be published for the first time since its inception more than 30 years ago.

Limited edition of 750 books