AURA

AURA :
Collaborations with Human & Other Minds 2011-2023

Norbert Schoerner

Published by False Glance
Softcover
210 x 290mm
166 Pages
ISBN 9781036966362

Conducted throughout 2011-2023 in collaboration with both human and machine intelligences, AURA is an investigation into photographic representation in the age of A.I. Presented as a set of visual essays and archival journaling, artist Norbert Schoerner tests and retests the relationship between language and image. Consisting of four collections of artworks, organised into sequential chapters, AURA tracks and reflects on new ways of seeing ushered in by the advent of machine learning, and on enduring questions of how our species perceives and depicts the sprawling dataset of the visible world.

Purchase from Antenne Books here

THE FACE MAGAZINE: CULTURE SHIFT

THE FACE MAGAZINE: CULTURE SHIFT

Edited by Sabina Jaskot-Gill, Norbert Schoerner, Lee Swillingham

National Portrait Gallery Publications (2025)

Softcover

25.5 x 32cm

The Face Magazine: Culture Shift (curated by Sabina Jaskot-Gill, Norbert Schoerner and Lee Swillingham) celebrates The Face’s most iconic portraits from 1980–2004. It explores the magazine’s role in the evolution of style photography and its international and enduring impact on visual culture.

The Face is the original, definitive, style bible – a ground-breaking magazine that has radically disrupted youth culture in Britain and beyond since its launch in 1980. Known for its striking design, bold, inclusive content and innovative photography, the magazine has launched the careers of many leading photographers, writers, designers, stylists and models.

PRADA ARCHIVE 1998-2002

Norbert Schoerner

PRADA ARCHIVE 1998-2002
Published by IDEA 2024
Designed by Jonny Lu Studio
978-1-7395918-4-7

Softback with archival-box greyboard covers
4 punched holes through the whole book
29.7 x 22cm
178 pages
First edition of 750

From the IDEA press release:

A formal exercise in making a book as true to Schoerner’s seminal campaigns as his photographs were to the DNA of the Prada brand. Art directed and designed by Jonny Lu Studio with a unique fold / hole punched format, Angela Lindvall’s face on the cover, the absence of text… form and function become inseparable. It is the book of Norbert Schoerner’s Prada. Its presence explains itself. The original art direction of the campaigns by David James. The new design by Jonny Lu. The curious perfection of the ring binder holes throughout the book. A book seeking further function. To be used again, as these images have been.

“Working with Prada takes a long time. It was very fragmented. Work in progress. Weweren’t working from a script. We were re-writing the script all the time. Formulating the concept every day. The work proceeds with failures, and reacts to changes. It’s very much an empirical process. And that’s the luxury of these campaigns. Other brands didn’t give you the time to do that…”
Norbert Schoerner

“In these four years, Prada was so dominant, the very definition of designer fashion. The cut and the materials completely defined the time. Without actually being futuristic or space age, Prada and Prada Sport somehow made the present so good that no one thought the future could ever get any better! Norbert’s campaigns are built on that – they are hyperreal but still real. And, arguably, our own world is further away now from the image he created.”
David Owen, IDEA

The Nature of Nature. Fukushima Project

The Nature of Nature. Fukushima Project – Museum Angewandte Kunst [Exhibition Catalogue]

Norbert Schoerner

Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König (2022)

Hardback 18 x 25 cm

The bonsais in Norbert Schoerner’s photographs were cultivated by the Abe family who live near Fukushima. For three generations, these masters – Kurakichi, his son Kenichi, and his grandson Daiki – have been growing bonsais from seeds. They use seeds from trees only to be found in the shadow of the volcanic Mount Azuma-Kofuji.

The photographs capture the bonsais in a dioramic setting. This visual event combines different chronologies: The topographic formation of Mount Azuma- Kofuji over the course of several geological epochs, the lifecycle of a bonsai that can span several centuries, the exposure time of a photograph, and finally, the independent existence of this picture in the future.

It is impossible to view these works without considering the ecological effects of the catastrophe that occurred in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in 2011. The photos provide a direct confrontation with the destructive consequences of this event, and with humanity’s attempts to use and control nature for its own purposes.

Texts by: Tom Morton, Shinichi Nakazawa, Julia Psilitelis, Matthias Wagner K.

Purchase here

PICTURES I NEVER TOOK

Pictures I Never Took – Newsprint pre-edition

Norbert Schoerner

Antenne Books (2017)

Newspaper 38 x 28.5

The ability to connect with an artwork involves attention to detail, our aesthetic sensibilities and is deeply personal. However, in this age of sensory and visual overload we have to ask whether we’re ever in front of an image for long enough?

Pictures I Never Took is conceived as a two-part project, the first part (pictured here) consists of a series of plates, presented in newspaper form, reminiscent of Ophthalmologists’ charts. They describe photographic images and encounters, rather than depict them. The second part of the project then sees the feeding of the textual plates into a GAN based machine-learning system. The ‘Story- to-Image’ Generator is an AI system that is able to visualise what is described in a text. The neural networks then conceive unique pictures based on the image descriptions by using ML image datasets.

For sales and distribution please contact Antenne Books 

See the full project here

NEARLY ETERNAL

Nearly Eternal

Norbert Schoerner & Steve Nakamura

Chance Publishing, imprint of Claire de Rouen Books (2016)

Hardcover, 30cm x 28cm

104 pages

Edition of 500

Printed in Japan

“All man’s efforts are for his mouth, yet his appetite is never satisfied.” (Ecclesiastes 6:7)

A new photography book about food. Haunting, beautiful and slightly humorous, Nearly Eternal traces a fine line between reality and fiction.

Negotiating different levels of artifice, the photographs challenge the assumed authenticity of the food book, inciting artificial desire in the viewer’s mind. Each photograph is a portrait of food in its perfect form – as display.

Norbert Schoerner is a photographer and filmmaker whose fashion campaigns have included Comme des Garçons and Prada; his editorial work has been seen in The Face, New York Times Magazine, Foam and many other publications. Schoerner’s work has been widely exhibited, including shows at White Cube and Chapman Fine Arts. He has previously published two monographs, The Order of Things (Phaidon, 2001) and Third Life (Violette Editions, 2012).

‘Whether it’s a raw egg yolk gripped by levitating chopsticks or sugar magically sprinkling over a juicy grapefruit, the images in the new book “Nearly Eternal” are a surreal and slightly sinister take on food.’ – T Magazine/New York Times

‘An extremely clever take on the relationship between the eye and the mind – what draws us in and what causes desire?’ – Nowness

THIRD LIFE

MONOGRAPH:

 

Third Life

Norbert Schoerner

Violette Editions (2012)

Edited and produced by Robert Violette
Designed by Micha Weidmann
PLC, 160 pages
100 colour illustrations
24.7 x 30 cm (h x w, landscape)
ISBN 978-1-900828-38-3

Texts by Tom Morton and Geoff Cox

Third Life is the new monograph by photographer Norbert Schoerner. Assembled as a cinematic narrative, this book collects new and previously unseen work produced over the last seven years.

‘Documenting his travels across the world, Third Life explores the submergence of nature in today’s digi-era of mass culture.’ – Felicity Kinsella, iD Magazine

‘Photographer Norbert Schoerner speaks of Japan as a place where a different standard for artifice applies. He could, at the same time, be referring to his own view of the world as seen through the photographs of his new book Third Life. Accumulated over the past eight years, the images roughly divide into unashamedly digital snaps and technical large format analogue observations. Juxtapositions of images in the book induce a strange malaise as do interventions of imageless white pages. Mistakes and accidents are championed and corrupted digital files produce a sort of optical-static printed adjacent to healthy image counterparts. Reality and projected reality are inseparable.’ – Emma Reeves, AnOther Magazine

‘The photographer has an uncanny knack of capturing very precise moments in time, resulting in a highly charged series of images.’ – WallPaper Art

Purchase from CLAIRE DE ROUEN BOOKS

THE ORDER OF THINGS

MONOGRAPH:

 

The Order of Things

Norbert Schoerner

Phaidon (2001)

176 pages

88 colour illustrations

185 x 260 mm

ISBN-13: 9780714840123

ISBN-10: 0714840122

Edited by David James

A specially-bound collection of exclusively commissioned work, presented in a book without a spine. The Order of Things is an art object in its own right.

‘The idea behind this innovative design is that Schoerner wanted to challenge the notion of the linear narrative.’ – Joanna Lehan, Photo District News

THE CONCISE DICTIONARY OF DRESS

The Concise Dictionary of Dress

Judith Clark, Adam Phillips

Photography by Norbert Schoerner

Violette Editions in association with Artangel and the Victoria & Albert Museum (2010)

Designed by Studio Frith
Hardback, 136 pages
79 colour and b/w illustrations
24.5 x 18.5 cm (h x w)
ISBN 978-1-900828-35-2

This book examines the nature of dictionaries, archives and dress curation, and adds a stunning visual essay recording two overnight tours through an Artangel-commissioned exhibition at Blythe House.

‘The game is this: Phillips provides definitions of a series of fashion terms while Clark creates installations that do the same (represented in the book by Norbert Schoerner’s photographic record). Naturally it’s a stunningly elegant production‘ – Mark Rappolt, Art Review

‘The visual element is only half the experience. The other half exists in the form of a book, published by Violette Editions: a handsome artefact in its own right‘ – Jane Shillling, The Daily Telegraph

YOU DIG THE TUNNEL, I’LL HIDE THE SOIL

YOU DIG THE TUNNEL, I’LL HIDE THE SOIL

Harland Miller

Published by Jay Jopling/White Cube Gallery (2008)

Designed by Jonathan Barnbrook

Paperback, 80 pages

21 x 14.8 cm (h x w)

ISBN 978-1-906072-15-5

White Cube Hoxton Square presented ‘You Dig the Tunnel, I’ll Hide the Soil’, curated by the artist and writer Harland Miller in collaboration with Irene Bradbury. In anticipation of the bicentenary of Edgar Allan Poe’s birth (1809), the exhibition explored the enduring legacy and cult status of the American writer.

 

Poe is now recognised as an artist far ahead of his time, particularly for the charged psychological facets of his work, which seemed to foretell psychoanalysis, pre-dating Freud by more than half a century. His famous detective, Dupin, became the blueprint for many future detectives, including Sherlock Holmes, Poirot and Miss Marple, and he is also a pioneer of what we now know as science fiction, influencing such writers as Jules Verne and H. G. Wells.

 

‘You Dig the Tunnel, I’ll Hide the Soil’ featured the work of Fergus Bremner, Jake & Dinos Chapman, John Cooper Clarke, Liz Craft, Tracey Emin, Angus Fairhurst, Katharina Fritsch, Paul Fryer, Barnaby Furnas, Douglas Gordon, Rodney Graham, Marcus Harvey, Anton Henning, Damien Hirst, Anselm Kiefer, Abigail Lane, Christian Marclay, Kris Martin, Harland Miller, Polly Morgan, Mike Nelson, Magnus Plessen, Michele Howarth Rashman, Julian Schnabel, Gregor Schneider, Norbert Schoerner, George Shaw, Cindy Sherman, Jason Shulman, Dirk Skreber, Paul Steinitz, Fred Tomaselli, Jane & Louise Wilson, and Cerith Wyn Evans.

 

APOCALYPSE

Apocalypse: Beauty and Horror in Contemporary Art

Norman Rosenthal with Michael Archer, Michael Bracewell, James Hall, and Nathan Kernan

Photography by Norbert Schoerner

A Royal Academy of Arts Publication (2000)

Softcover, 256 pages

200 illustrations in full color

11 x 115/8″

ISBN 10: 0810966328

ISBN 13: 9780810966321

Apocalypse accompanies one of the most exciting art events of the year 2000. Concentrating on themes inspired by the coming of the 21st century, this internationally significant exhibition – the successor to the controversial “Sensation” exhibition – will include installations, paintings, sculptures, and videos, many specially created for the exhibition by 15 internationally renowned and controversial artists. For the catalogue, the talented photographer Norbert Schoerner has photographed the artists at work in their studios. Norman Rosenthal, exhibitions secretary at the Royal Academy and curator of the exhibition, contributes an introduction explaining his personal vision of the arts at this turning point in history.

‘The horror, the horror. Three years after Royal Academy Exhibition Secretary Norman Rosenthal organized the controversial Sensation exhibit comes the sequel, Apocalypse. It takes as its philosophical starting point the Book of Revelation, though the subtitle exposes a compromising catch-all: Beauty and Horror in Contemporary Art. The kitsch creations of Jeff Koons and Mariko Mori and the casual photography of Wolfgang Tillmans provide superficial beauty, while the most obvious horror is Hell, Jake and Dinos Chapman’s truly apocalyptic sculpture comprising nine glass cases arranged in a swastika, containing 5,000 figurines of Nazis and their torturers indulging in unspeakable sadism. This Goyaesque vision of eternal return is the centerpiece of the exhibition, and rightly so. […] 

Rosenthal’s attractive catalog for these memento mori from his 13 international Cassandras lends the exhibition invaluable context and strategy, especially given the apologia passing for notes on the gallery walls. Alongside a CV are photographs of other works by each artist, followed by stills of their apocalyptic exhibit. […] Intended as a bifocal survey incorporating history and the postmillennial present, “Apocalypse” proves not so much a sensation as a curate’s egg.’ – David Vincent

JIL SANDER, PRESENT TENSE

Jil Sander, Present Tense

by Jil Sander, Matthias Wagner K, Ingeborg Harms

Prestel Verlag (2017)

263 pages

This comprehensive catalogue was published on the occasion of Jil Sander’s retrospective exhibition ‘Präsens’ (Present Tense) at the Museum Angewandte Kunst (Frankfurt) in 2017/18. 

Challenging the styles of flamboyant femininity, her collections have delighted the fashion world with their purity since the late 1960’s. She proposes a modernity which does away with senseless ornaments, while dynamizing the individual.

Norbert Schoerner was invited by Jil Sander and MAK to collaborate with the designer on various aspects of the show which spans her work from the late 1960s to 2014. One being an installation showing a 16 minute film of Jil’s private garden in the north German countryside, a retreat that she has been returning to for over 30 years, and which has never before been shown publicly.

DAZED AND CONFUSED

Dazed & Confused: Making It Up As We Go Along

Written by Jefferson Hack

Edited by Jo-Ann Furniss

Foreword by Ingrid Sischy

Rizzoli (2011)

Hardcover, 272 pages

3.5 x 24.3 x 30.9 cm

ISBN-10: 0847836924

ISBN-13: 978-0847836925

Edited by its founders, this daringly illustrated book immortalises the magazine’s most enduring features, from legendary photo shoots and iconic covers to controversial interviews, and supplements them with outtakes, ephemera from the editors’ offices, original artwork, and contributions from the photographers, designers, and artists behind it all. Celebrating twenty years of an agenda-setting powerhouse of contemporary style, design, and popular culture.

Page 170 – September 2001 – SALÓ – Alexander McQueen

“Norbert Schoerner is an extraordinary photographer. He’s got a really amazing mind and a filmic, futuristic sensibility. He really rose to the challenge on this shoot, and it turned out to be the perfect collaboration. It’s a very strange story – the lighting, the oddness of it. I don’t really now where any of it was coming from in Lee’s mind. Lee had a very special relationship with the magazine and when he felt like he had the sudden urge to do something really exceptional, out-there and uninhibited he would always bring it to Dazed. I mean, it wasn’t like he was doing that kind of thing all the time – it was almost like he was gestating this kind of thing and that he then had to get it out… it had to exist. There was a sense that he was exercising his creativity through the pages of the magazine, and he knew that he was not going to be curtailed in doing that.” – Emma Reeves

‘The book compiles 20 years of work by celebrity journalist Jefferson Hack and his photographer pal Rankin, who made their Dazed & Confused magazine the vanguard of cool-kid culture. Making It Up includes interviews and photos of everyone from Yves Saint Laurent and Kate Moss to Björk and David Bowie. Punky, disruptive and loud–this is a fun one to leave lying around the house.’ ~ Forbes Life

ARCHEOLOGY OF ELEGANCE

Archaeology of Elegance, 1980-2000: 20 Years of Fashion Photography

Marion De Beupre, Stephane Baumet, Ulf Poschardt

St. Martin’s Press (2003)

Hardcover, 363 pages

3.8 x 26.7 x 31.1 cm

ISBN-10: 0847825124

ISBN-13: 978-0847825127

Be it punk, glamour, hi-tech and futurism or fine art, culture critic Ulf Poschardt believes that photography is now pop culture’s main means of communication and most innovative supplier of ideas. Together with Marion de Beaupre, Poschardt puts his thesis to the test in this anthology of the best and most cutting edge fashion photography of the last twenty years. 204 beautifully reproduced pictures by seventy-four of the world’s most acclaimed photographers, among them Guy Bourdin, Peter Lindbergh, Jean-Baptiste Mondino, Stephane Sednaoui and Wolfgang Tillmans, seem to bear his theory out, suggesting that the medium has indeed become the message, and that what used to be a purely functional craft has become an artform in itself.

THE IMPOSSIBLE IMAGE

The Impossible Image

Edited by Phillip Poynter, with an introduction by Robin Derrick

Phaidon Press (2000)

Hardback, 192 pages

English

112 colour illustrations

290 x 224 mm, 11 3/8 x 8 7/8 in

ISBN-13: 9780714839677

ISBN-10: 0714839671

Fashion today is as much about image as it is about ideas: indeed the two concepts are synonymous with our perceived notions of style. Yet over the past decade, the increasing use of technology and image manipulation within the fashion industry have led to a noticeable increase in the fantastical image. From fashion shoots that display clothes adorned on invisible models, to painterly reinterpretations of the traditional fashion tableaux, the fine line between reality and fantasy is becoming increasingly blurred.

‘Pushing into fashion’s computer driven-frontierland, the photographers included in The Impossible Image are creating the genre’s most arresting dreamscapes.‘ – Village Voice

‘The best photography book of the past year.‘ – Creative Review