Chiho & Christoph Bangert – The fotobus Manual
You can get copies on Christophs website.
ISBN 978-3-9824530-0-2
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26,5x31 cm
416 pages
English
ISBN 978-3-9824530-0-2
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First edition
Printed in Germany at Seltmann Printart
Print run: 1200 copies
July 2022
‘The Fotobus Manual is my personal teaching manifesto. When I started, I knew absolutely nothing about education. I began to write down stuff that seemed to work for me and over time, 32 teaching principles emerged. They function as goals and ideals that outline how I personally want to teach. I feel strongly about these 32 rules, but the only person I’m giving advice to is myself. These principles can be used to teach photography, design, art, film, music and literature. In fact, I believe they can be helpful to teach anything. It would make me extremely happy if some of them would work for you!‘
‘The basis for the Fotobus Manual is a 30-year-old repair manual of a Mercedes-Benz O 303 Omnibus, the exact model that is used by the Fotobus Society, a non-profit organization that I founded together with my students in 2018. Chiho and I collaborated on this book. We used blue ink to print images of the Fotobus journeys onto the existing black and white design of the original repair manual. Additionally, we used gold silk screen ink to print the 32 teaching principles on top, building three layers that merge into each other and create something entirely new. The published version of the Fotobus Manual is a facsimile of the original artist book. It looks very similar and follows the same concept, but it is created using three color offset printing.‘
– Christoph
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The Book is designed by Chiho & Christoph Bangert.
The pictures in the book where taken by members of the fotobus Society.
Christoph Bangert was born in 1978 in Daun, Germany and works as a photographer, author, educator and certified bus driver. He studied photojournalism and documentary photography at the International Center of Photography in New York. Since graduating, he has photographed in Afghanistan, Palestine, Lebanon, Japan, Nigeria and Iraq, among other places.
His pictures have appeared in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zeit, Cicero, GEO, Stern, Neon, Spiegel, Time, Newsweek, New Yorker and the New York Times Magazine. On assignment for the New York Times, he documented the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from 2005 to 2013. Bangert took part in the Joop Swart Masterclass 2007 and his work has been awarded the World Press Photo Award, Pictures of the Year International Award, German Photo Book Award and has been nominated for the W. Eugene Smith Grant, Prix Pictet and Aperture Photo Book Award.
He is the author of several books, including War Porn (Kehrer 2014), hello camel (Kehrer 2016) and Rumors of War (Kehrer 2021). Bangert is the founder of the Fotobus Society, one of the largest non-profit photography student projects worldwide, which is supported by Nikon. He is co-editor of the annual Fotobus publication Further, published by Kettler. Currently, Bangert is a professor of photography at the Hanover University of Applied Sciences and Arts.
Christoph Bangert lives in Cologne, Germany together with his wife Chiho — a Japanese photographer and graphic designer he frequently collaborates with — and their two daughters.
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The Fotobus Society is a network of almost 900 students working in the fields of photography, film, art and media from more than 30 European universities and schools. The Fotobus travels to photo festivals, workshops, conferences and does expeditions throughout Europe. It’s a photo school on wheels.
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