Benedikt Taschen

35:41He was not happy with the design, but to bring them together. In the end, we wanted to make it look lighter than it was. Light, I mean, light weighter, kind of floating. And I think Stark did a great fantastic design on this. And it worked out very well, and it was a huge success for us. And through Helmut, who I became very close then in later years, he was kind enough to bring me together with all his friends. He had friends from all walks of life everywhere in the world. And that was wonderful for me and very helpful for all other books we did later. Tell me the psychology of book sizes. So you have books that are, I'll call them coffee table book size, then you have small books that are very thick.

36:44And then you have books like sumo giant books. Yeah, we always believed in in formats. That means the rats you between length and width and thickness. And of course, as well how the paper is what kind of paper you have a color and the texture, how it's haptically in your hands. And that takes a long time to produce a perfect product. And once you have it, then better keep it and go ahead through it. Because it's not easy to have this reinvented. We have all kinds of sizes, very small ones, very big ones, but they all have to have an equilibrium that they look like they are designed to be like this.

37:41If you just inflate something that it's overly big, it just doesn't work. I mean, it works for a second, but not longer. And wisdom as a sumo that was, yeah, that was in a way a novelty. And we kind of perfectly hid it off and it became one of the certainly our most successful book we ever had. Or at least our most popular, famous one. Yeah. I've seen that the first edition sold for over $400 ,000 at auction. Yes, what we did was the idea and we succeeded. Thanks fully. We did the first copy was signed by 100 people who were portrayed in the book. And this was auctioned in the year 2000 in Berlin.

38:42And it became the most expensive book published in the 20th century. And yeah, from there on, we were the happy kids and could not believe our luck. But you know, you never know how stuff works till you did it. Does it sound very smart? No. Do you ever do multiple formats? Like do you ever release a book big and then release it small? Oh, all the time. That's the whole, that's definitely the concept of our publishing idea. Because we put a lot of time, money and passion into every big production. And we only can do it because we want to see the same book in print for the next 10, 20 or 50 years.

39:39So we have a lot of books which are now 40 years old in our program. And of course, we update them. But if we would not make the smaller versions later, because the big versions have more or less an unlimited budget. So we spend or pay what we think is worse to do. And we don't make a lot of calculations upfront. We just put in what we need. And to make it work, you have to have it for long, it needs a long, long shelf life. But beside of this, once you did a book on, let's say, the complete paintings of Angroch, there is no change 10 years later, 20 years later, unless there's another painting discovered or so, but basically it is what it is.

40:30Therefore, we like to do it once, then it's done.

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42:08You did a book. I believe it's called Apartment House Wrestling. Do you know what that is? Definitely. I didn't know before, but now I do know there was a German photographer who had named a few earheads. He lived in Los Angeles. He was there for decades already. He covered a niche market subject. It was Apartment Wrestling. And the friend of mine, two artists from California, Mike Kelly and Jamie Hammer. They suggested me to look into his work. So I visited him in Silver Lake about 25 years ago. And he was surprised that somebody is seriously interested in this stuff. And they're not. I really would like to see this.

43:01They had a, you know, you can see a photographer. What kind of, you see right away, it's a composition how can they deal with light and put it all together. And this guy definitely knew what he was doing. Although the subject was so less than marginal. And I thought that is admirable. How can somebody spend years of his life doing girls, apartment wrestling photos? And so we thought we have to make a big book with this guy. The title was exquisite mayhem. Was it well received? Well, let's put that is relative. I know some friends, for instance, Bruce Weber told me, okay, a guy who does a book like this, he has to be a respected man or whatever.

43:56And I thought Bruce, that is a very kind of user to say that, especially when it comes from you. And then, but otherwise it was selling not at all. I think it was rarely sold for many years. But we loved each and every book we printed. And after a while, we got rid of all of them as well. Yeah, maybe it was too early. Well, maybe too late. I can tell you here, but Helmut Newton again, we did two years later. We started his big book on Muhammad Ali called Goat Greatest of All Time. And I met him through his manager, Bernie Humann from Las Vegas. Wonderful man. And maybe the only manager I loved from the first day onwards.

44:50Because usually we always deal only direct with the talent. And so Bernie, I told him, okay, I have to send him one of these big Helmut Newton sum of works that he understands. Yes, the scale of it. And so I didn't think too much about it. So I had him send this copy. And Bernie, who was never really short of words, but that time he called me and said, Benedict, tell me what Ali just called me. And he said, why did this guy Tashin send me a book with a big naked white woman of the cover to me as a Muslim? And Bernie said, what should I tell him now? And I thought, okay, Bernie, well, tell me just getting wrong.

45:40So these were just women have no money for clothes, you know, poor women. And that's how I did, okay, I do this. So he called him and Ali was laughing and then he was happy. And because he had to sign 10 ,000 books, wow. And that took him a while. Yeah. Did you get to meet him personally? Oh, yes, often. Very often. How was that relationship? Oh, I mean, it was most amazing because it was for me being a child growing up in the 1960s. I used to watch with my family, with my father, mother, and siblings. These were the first life cast sports events in the world. So in Germany, it was in the middle of the night.

46:30And we saw these quite a number of fights. And he was always one of my great inspirations and heroes. Yeah. And that was a big thing for me in the first time. I met him and we really wanted to make it work in a way that he does not need me or he doesn't need a book because he is more hamed Ali. But on the other hand, we put more probably into this book than into any other book. And we tried, I visited dozens of photographers all over the world and here in America. Anyhow, this means Ali, that was wonderful because he was first time he saw the book. He said, I didn't know that I was so great. And that was wonderful.

47:25He loved it and it was more than well received all over the world. It was definitely a labor of love. Do you print in one place and then ship books everywhere or do you print in different countries? It depends on the formats. But there's more, there's bigger books, let's say like this Ali book or the new, this is mainly done printed in Italy. And we have our own binary for oversized books in Italy because it's such a specialty. You need certain equipment choices. Yes. And more or less nobody can do this in the world. So we have our own book binding company. Yeah. So Ali, that was very rewarding for us as well because you know, a guy who had everything in the world and all the unbelievable ups and downs and ups again and downs and another and he was happy like a little child.

48:21That was the most rewarding part of it, you know, to make him happy. And I think as well if you see the book today or in I don't know 50 years from now, people would say, wow, who was this guy? Man. What a life. Yeah. What was the first cinema book that you put out? Or we did a couple, but the first important one I thought, which was really looking different from other movie books. It was Billy Wilder on some like it hot. And Billy Wilder was the one of the directors I really loved because not only he was a missing link for me generations, two generations ahead of me from Germany, who immigrated to America in the 30s and became one of the most successful and important directors ever.

49:21I met him in the 1990s in Los Angeles and by the way through the introduction of Helmut Newton kind enough like he always was. And somehow whenever I was in Los Angeles, I saw him a couple of times a week. He was a wonderful man. He, you know, he had eyes and ears to listen and see stuff as us won't. Yeah, no, how can I describe it? And he always had this very human touch in whatever he did, whether it was drama, comedy, or you know film noir. But it always had this wilder touch. So when I suggested him to do this book on some like it hot, he was very curious and said, yes, great. He was already in his early 90s at that time.

50:14But very helpful he was. We were able to talk with more, more or less everyone who was still alive who participated in the movie. Yeah, I wouldn't say there's something like it hot book was the first. And then we did the first book on Stanley Kubrick. Unfortunately, when the book came out, he was, he passed away already. Kubrick, in the meantime, we did another four or five different other ones on individual movies, like The Shining. We did 2001. And on Napoleon, that was the most famous movie never made. It was never realized. Yeah. Tell me about the Kenneth Sphere House, the chemistry house.

51:01I didn't really know about the chemistry house, what I did know was a picture by Julius Schulman. It's kind of a profile picture of the house in the hillside overlooking the valley. And I said, wow, I want to see it right away. So the next day I drove by and I was in awe because it's such an incredible sculpture. Or let's say an expression of America, like an innocent America before the Vietnam War. So it is very flamboyant and you won't see anything like this in the rest of the world. So I definitely, I would say, I fall in love with the house on the side. And I said, I buy it. And it was $995 ,000.

51:58My not detail was only that I didn't have the money. So, but as I said, yes, I buy it anyhow. So I bought it. And later I had to buy two pieces of art from my collection to make it work. But from there on, it started to become really costly because you had to renovate it and it needed really love and attention. And I had the great luck that I could work with Swiss Mexican architect Frank Escher and his partner Ravi. And they were very knowledgeable about Lordna. So he worked with him for a while before he passed. So and we restored it for three, four years. And it was very fortunate because most people architect who restore houses have no clue what they're doing.

52:57Because especially in America, they love restorations which look very sleek. But if it's sleek, that in the end you ripped out the soul of the house. And if it's gone, it's gone. The same with furniture or with cars or whatever he's tall. But they were different. They want to preserve what they could preserve and only change which had a reason for it already in the past. So and then later they won as well the price for the best restoration of a house in America from this year, 97 or 98. But the funny thing was there was later met groaning. You know, in the 90s he had a show, a Simpson show and it starts with chemistry house and the crook for sale sign.

53:48It hangs like halfway down and it's full of spider webs because nobody bought the house over the years. Anyhow, I'm happy it was kind of getting married to the house and over the years we could buy some adjacent pieces of land and to other houses. And so now we have around the chemistry house a whole hilt of gardens. How's the experience of living in that house? It's a masterpiece. Whenever you, whenever I am there or sleep there, just visiting, I can see that it's done in a unique moment of time. And it was a combination of the guy who built it, the builder. He wasn't, I think, an airplane engineer.

54:45So he was very open to new ideas. And the reason why it is built like it is, you know, it sits on massive concrete column which goes like 25 feet in the ground is because it was such a steep hillside otherwise it would have been not buildable. You had to escape the whole thing. Now it's wonderful. I mean, this house showed me what architecture can do, how it can change your life as well. In this case, to the grouch. When you take on a topic to do a book on, let's say case study houses, oh yeah, do you feel an obligation to tell the whole story? Yes. Once we are in there, we are in there. And the case study houses is a great example for me because I knew a little bit about some of these architects, the most famous ones like Neutra or Eames.

55:55But that was a whole range in order to get a maybe a dozen of these architects. It started. There was a magazine in Los Angeles published called Arts and Architecture by a guy named Richard and Tenza. And he started, after it started in 1945 after the war. And there was housing, a need in California, specifically in California. Let's put this way from homecoming soldiers and on top of this all America was booming like never before. And one critical issue of course was homes for these people. And they started competition. It was basic, not a competition, but something like this with these case study houses.

56:46How to make industrial materials which can be produced at a much better price. How can you use it for contemporary architecture, homes building? So these case study houses, it was very influential but it did not lead to a kind of a mass market for these homes because in the end they were kind of still expensive. But it was a wonderful idea. This modernist architecture at that time was highly influential in a way that it represented a future believing optimistic America at that time even before the Korean War. And this was the expression of modernism. And the case study houses, I think all together these were about 25.

57:44When we did our book, the only available publication over, I don't know, it was 40 years back for the dead time. I was a little pampholite with few pages but really nothing. At the same time by contemporary photographer illustrated his name as Julius Schulman. And without Julius Schulman, he was kind of the memory of modernism. So to say, he photographed all these buildings and made them look even better than they ever were here in some cases. So we did this case study house book and we made with the museum, I think with a mocha in Los Angeles, an event maybe 20 years ago. And we still, at that time, were like seven or eight living case study house architects there.

58:42So that was pretty amazing because in a way, most of them were forgotten as well. It's a beautiful book. I love the wide format. Yeah, but without the Julius Schulman, no way that we could have done it. That was definitely one of the many highlights I had, things, God's visiting and meeting with Julius Schulman. He was born on 10, 10, 10. I remember this because he said it repeatedly and it sounded easy to remember. And when I came to see his house in Hollywood Hills, it was definitely like a time tunnel, boom, back in 1948 or whatever. It was a wonderful warm and humorous guy. And when we asked him to do something, we could do together and he said, yes, I'm just finishing my memoirs.

59:50And I said, okay, well, I'm happy to do this. And that's possibly the beginning of our collaboration. And in this case, as well, our friendship. How many books did you do with him? We did maybe four or five. Yeah. But we used his photos in many of other other architecture publications. Like all the great photographers, he created his own style. What made his photos difference beside of dramatic lighting and composition, he was, it sounds funny, but that is a case. He was the first photographer and architecture who introduced the human being into the humans, into the picture. Nobody else did it.

1:00:37It's funny, but when you have a human in the picture, you understand scale. Not only scale, you understand the whole, it gives you architecture is made for humans. But the funny thing is that architects usually didn't like it. Somehow it was like this, that the pictures you see, you just saw them, deserted, like no human ever put a foot on the ground there. And Julia's not only had one, but as well groups intersecting. And as you say, of course, that's the only way to understand proportion and the size of all of it. And it makes it more human. And it also the clothing stamps it with a date. And all his photos, his photography was classically elegant throughout.

1:01:32And without Julius, something would miss in this second part of the 20th century.

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1:03:19Tell me about your relationship to books from your childhood. My parents had a lot of books in their house and I grew up reading since I was a young boy. One reason why I was often alone because I was the youngest out of five. And they let me be myself. And so my books were my friends early on. I read a lot of books as well. Probably not appropriate for the age group like Henry Miller. So and because I just took books out of the shelf and this. But others as well where I started, I read all Jules Bound books and later I read a lot of American writers like Apsinclair or John Steinbeck or Raymond Chentler, Bukowski and so on.

1:04:22So I was definitely a book mom not that I didn't go out or so I did plenty full yeah. But I left to read earlier on. And when did you live with comic books come? That came later when I read already a ton of books and I was maybe 12. And by coincidence it happened. I read the German Mickey Mouse magazine head as well. It was not just Mickey Mouse was the duck family and I liked always the duck family. Actually that was the only thing I liked the rest of I was not interested in. And I found out Disney never allowed the artists to neither copyright nor sign who made the drawings or the narration the storytelling.

1:05:15But one was profoundly different from all the other ones. Later I found out his name was Karl Marx and he's kind of the creator of the duck family with uncle Scrooge, Donald the nephew and everything. Donald Duck and his offspring. Yes. He was not only an amazing storyteller but as well as an artist. So I've never seen it anywhere else. And his stories I loved them from the beginning on and I can say that I probably learned everything at least I thought at that time about America, California, Southern California and capitalism. This is the cause of Karl Marx, Donald Duck. I think he started in the mid -40s and did it for 25 years or whatever.

1:06:11And that was how I fall in love with comic books or specifically with this guy. Later I found out that there are others in the world who did the same and he had already a much growing fan base Karl Marx. But unfortunately, beside of this comic book fan club circle, where he was a big star already 40 years ago or so or 50 years ago, he never became a household name. But he was inspirational for generations of children and I mean he is as great a writer as Mark Twain is I would say. You know, or any other household great name. And without Karl Marx, my life would have gone in the different direction.

1:07:05I'm pretty sure about that. Let's say there's a subject that you're interested in. It could be a photographer for the past that you've come across or an architect who's working like, tell me the process. You have the idea, this is a subject worthy of doing a book. What happens next? We usually work always with the artists directly, whether the artists or photographer design. Anything artist has passed? Well, then it's more difficult to work with him directly. So you have to directly with his spirit. I see. Yeah, or in his spirit. Yeah. No, we kind of what I want to say is we are the we feel as if we take on this job to do this.

1:07:54Yeah, it's a commitment and we just try to make the best out of it. And that's a close collaboration. We never do anything against someone but only with someone. Yeah. And we, you know, we are respectful. You know, we, the goal is to get the best result. And the second goal is of course to sell as much as we can. Yeah. Because I always like to sell. You know, if you don't sell, then you're out of business. Yeah. Then nobody. And it also doesn't spread the art like it's the goal. It definitely is to turn people on to this great artist. I was for a few years. I was kind of a vote in, I was still in school but I was in a vote -ville theater for a few years.

1:08:40And why did I do it? I had fun doing it. But if you don't get up lost, then you're kind of fucked. You know, I mean, yeah. And that's the same. If you make a book and nobody buys it and that happens all the time, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not better than there are a few times. But if it happens all the time constantly, then maybe you better do something else. You know, are there any books that would be too dangerous to publish?

1:09:11I would say maybe one of the dangerous books we did is, at least for certain parts of the world, like in China, we worked with this as a public enemy number one and number two. Close. One is the Dalai Lama and the second one is Ayy Y. And they definitely did not like this at all. But what can we do? I mean, I'm a admirer of China and of whatever, 4 ,000 years of history. But that doesn't say that we can't do what we want to do, you know. And for the Dalai Lama, it was when we did this book on the murals of Tibet, it was, you know, keeping a record of this world, heritage people don't know about because it's hidden in the middle of the highest mountains in the world.

1:10:08And the lot was destroyed by Chinese. Or if it was not destroyed, it was not supported anymore and then it fall apart. So, art, what we're doing, if people think it's dangerous, they might be right because the artists, they do what they want. And otherwise, they wouldn't be artists, you know. And our art, our support is 100 % behind the artists, nothing else. First comes the artist and second comes the bio. And everything else is only personal stuff you can forget about. It's a direct communication between the artist and the person interested in the artist. Everything else is noise. I fully agree with this.

1:11:01I mean, I have no doubt at all that this is the, at least for us the only way how to what makes us work or what shouldn't make us work. You know, the think of passion as a counterculture publishing house. Look, we did a lot of counterculture over the years. And I can say, yes, it's certainly the substantial part of what we did. I have to explain it in a way. This is always changing how the reception is, what is counterculture and what is mainstream. Yes. That is nothing new. I think it was always like this. Yes. It has to do with time, but as well with fashion, it happened to the greatest painters in the world.

1:11:51Let's say, Fermé. You know, Fermé was entirely forgotten for many, many years. And then I don't know when it started. In the late 19th century, people started to get interested in him in his work. And he did only, I don't know, 35 paintings or so. But he was generally forgotten for decades or centuries. And he is not the only one who shared this is faith. So counterculture and culture, this is always in limbo. You know, you cannot. Yeah. But out of culture, it till it gets popular enough to become mainstream. Yeah. So it definitely had as well an advantage. There is an advantage if you have no prejudices because you have no knowledge.

1:12:37You know. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you know, what you do. Eyes and ears to form at your own opinion or something. Yeah. And I was in a way forced to do this. And on the other hand, I really liked as well as this counterculture always. Yeah. What was the first cash in bookstore since you've been cash in books? Oh, the first real bookstore we did was in Paris and San Jo -Man. We did it in the late 1990s. We worked together with a great French designer, Philippe Stark. And he loved our books, our program because you know, the main part of our books is to democchialize books in a way that they are easier accessible and at different price points available.

1:13:34But he wanted to create a design around it which looks kind of inviting. But on the other hand, it looks very precious as well. And so we still have this store unaltered for 25 or longer, more years now. And it's always a great pleasure to see it how he did it long time ago. And how many stores are there now around the world? OVF maybe 15. What percentage of the books that you put out are part of a series versus standalone books? Well, they're in a way standalone books. But on the other hand, they're in a format which is a series where we have already, let's say, with the basic art books. We have already 150 others or so.

1:14:27So they're all like monographs. They're on their own standing alone, but there are many others in the same series. Do you do many books that are really in fashion? Or we did a lot of his fashion designers, or whatever, he seemed a yark or Valentino callagophilz we did in the couple of others. Pucci is not the most substantial part of our program, but we have quite a number, all recently, of course, over the last years, more street young designers like Virgil Abel, we did, it was one of the best -selling titles we had over the last couple of years. How about posters? The posters, we're going to do a couple of more poster books in the works.

1:15:24Before, photography came up, and that was maybe, let's say, the 1950s. The poster was, of course, the art form not only to advertise, but as well as to, if you have movie posters, it was genre.

1:15:53How was a much more artistic work involved, yeah. So these posters are pretty remarkable, and once you see them, I fall in love with them. It started all, more or less, with the art novel and the end of the 19th century, when these printing machines were invented. Yeah, I love this stuff. Are you ever surprised by which books sell or don't sell? Yes, because it is not predictable. Yeah. We don't do marketing that we first check, is this something? People are looking forward or what might people think about this and that. We don't operate like this, not that we're not interested in it. I think it's simply not possible.

1:16:44How can we know what five billion people might think? I don't even know what your neighbor knows or thinks. Or me, myself, of course, we ask people and just always a handful or a couple of people say, what do you think about this and that. But you can do this only very selected, and as more people you ask, as more opinions you get, and as more work you have, if you feel yourself good with it, then the likelihood that it works, at least from the product here, site here, or artistically, or from design, then it's very likely that others think the same. Unless the subject is such a marginal one, then no one, whatever you do, and how beautifully you do it, and how much standard it is, it can't be successful, because it's just too small a potential audience.

1:17:37But what it is exactly, I have no idea. That's a mystery, and that's kind of fun as well that it stays like this. It's not that it's entirely unpredictable. I wouldn't go so far, but there are always titles which are doing so much better than others, and if you would have known before, then everybody else would do it anyhow. Can you think of a book that you had high hopes for that for whatever reason and didn't connect with the audience? Yes, I mean, some of these books, it's not unexpected, because we knew it is a very limited audience. They'd say the apartment's wrestling book, Female, we had a similar case with photographer, his name was Elma Betas, and his love was a foot and leg photography.

1:18:37Finished photography? Yeah, whatever, that was his body photograph, feet and leg. And he lived in San Pedro, and the leg language, your kind of talk. That was his...

1:18:57I visited his home, and I knew a number of his photos in these different magazines, but a lot of these photos he did in his home, and on his terrace there, and all was. So it was kind of a... I got very close to him, and I really loved this guy, and I loved no matter what the subject is, I just love it, and people have an extraordinary drive of fun to do something very specific. And no matter what it is, it's interesting when someone is focused on something that no one else is focusing on. Yeah, or let's say at least very few others. Yes, yes. Yeah, so he was the King of Leg Photography, so to say.

1:19:51The same with a guy like Eric Stanton. Eric Stanton, he was a comic book artist, but as well, his key main subject was a dominant woman. Eric Stanton, I think, Russian origin, the parents that came to New York in the 1930s or 20s, and when I knew some of his comic books, they were all very kind of a kinky erotic ones, and we made a big book out of this, and he was touched in tears, so to say. And I know that he had tons of followers over the years, all over the world, but there was never a big manifest of his work, and for sure nobody really took it serious, but it is serious. And you know, at first of all, if you embrace your fantasies, this alone is the first step to make something special, and that you're not feeling guilty that you have this fetish or that or this.

1:21:02It doesn't matter, and he translated it in his works and his drawings in a way nobody else at least to my knowledge did. It requires some respect if somebody is doing it. Let's say you go to a restaurant and somebody really puts a lot into the meal, you should be respectful, don't ask, okay, can I have this sketch up on this? That's not what you do. I mean, you can do it, but you make a full out of yourself. And I think if you see there's an extraordinary work in something, you have to be respectful and treated like this. Tell me about your relationship with national geographic, and how did it come about?

1:21:50All we were asked, it was an anniversary coming up, it was the 125 years of national geographic, and as you know, there was always the magazine, probably for quite some time as well, with the largest circulation in the world, and they did a remarkable job always in this bent more money into their assignments than anybody else. People, photographers and writers were working for months or sometimes years on a story, and in the end, it only, you know, in the magazine, you had like 10 pages or five or 15, if it was a month. Though we thought, how can we make best use of this unique archive? And so we came up with a concept around the world with national geographic in 125 years.

1:22:48To this point, it is definitely one of my favorite books we did, because first of all, we had this amazing archive, and we had access to everything we wanted to do, half. And at that time, quite a number of these photographers were still alive as well. Once they saw the final books, they were, I remember at least three of them were in tears, because it was the first time that the work was seen in a different way, and a different scale as well, on top of this, because national geographic, as you know, is a small scale. Pretty small, yeah. Based on that experience, are there other great libraries of information out there that are just waiting for you to...

1:23:37Oh yeah, I mean, there's always something we've just finished a book on the archives of Life Magazine. It's fantastic. That was only on Hollywood, yeah. And we were very happy with the final resultances, because the material to start with is so vast already. And then you have to go through the individual files, and I knew how these files looked like when we were working on the gold greatest of all time, our lead book. I saw at least, I don't know, 20 different archives, and one of the biggest ones was as well here with Life Magazine and Sports Illustrated, it was all the same company at that time, Time Life.

1:24:21And so the photographers, they were assigned to a job, let's say, to photograph Humphrey Bogart in, for, on Africa, Queen, and some wherever it's filmed in Africa. There was one file with all the contact sheets, but then as well, the photographers had to write captions to each of the frames as well, yeah. In the end, in the magazine, they used maybe one picture or two or none, yeah. And what was seen at that time as the best one of the most print worthy is not necessary today, or we wouldn't probably agree with it, so we would choose something else. But that is a lot of work, and you only can do it from time to time, because it's really tiring to do it right.

1:25:14And that was the same with National Geographic and Life. We have happy, very happy that we could do this together with them. And I think that the result was what we finally got, but it's very tiring many years of work. Have you done any collections of magazines bound? Oh, yeah, we did a couple of reprints. That's like on Dohmos magazine, a lot of, we did a couple of interior and architecture ones, yeah. Dohmos magazine and arts and architecture, this American magazine based in Los Angeles, and a few other ones. We did a six volume series on the history of man's magazines, it starts in the late 1900s, and it stops maybe in the 1970s or so, yeah.

1:26:10That is funny that we did it, but yeah. Have you done comic book compilations? Yes, I mean, we did a number of reprints now, and big in the large size. A new one is coming up now on Tarzan by two excellent artists, one called Health Forster and Burn Hogarth. And we did a little Nemo and Crazy Cat, and we are doing Marvel and EC Comics. And yeah, we have a, we're getting a very substantial comic book program. So it's coming after 40 or plus years, back to the roots. Yeah. And what I like to, I'm very excited about it, because we know by now how we can do it, that it looks as good as it would have looked if the technology and the money put into this at the time when it was published.

1:27:17Yeah, I would say the artist would be proud and happy if it would have been, if they could have seen it in this way. I see. Yeah. So first of all, you know, and that's the reason why we have it in the biggest scale, the biggest size, the magazines, they downsized it to maybe half the size, like it was the original drawings were like in centimeters, that's a 50 centimeters each for each page, and it was published in the size of 20 or whatever that means it inches. They did not spend a lot of money to make the registers all fit and all of this. But in an ideal world, you could have done it. Yeah.

1:28:01So what we do with, and the reason why I tell you this is, we don't want to alter something. It's more like a restoration process. That's how we describe it. And we put a lot of time and money into this to make that look as good as it gets. And I think that's what this regard is as well now. Is there another publishing house that you're a great fan of? Oh, you know what? Since I read every day and I buy every day books from everywhere, old ones, new ones, there are a number of outstanding publishing houses. Let's say, yeah, Penguin, no doubt has an amazing list and not only, and they have this for decades.

1:28:46It's for sure. One of these publishing houses or one of these brands where you know as well, okay, if this name is on it, if you're interested in a subject or not, doesn't matter, but at least you have a standard, which is an excellent one. That's the same with the newspaper, let's say if you read the New York Times or the Frankfurt -Argemine or I don't know, the Le Mans or the financial Times, at least you have a standard there and no matter which article you read and if, let's say you're in holidays and you have nothing else to read, you read the entire newspaper. But Penguin, but here as an art publisher, the Times in Hudson is a great publishing house, no doubt.

1:29:29And they do it for 70, or about five years. And I admire stuff like that, especially if you are in it for a long time and still independent. How is it different publishing something new versus publishing something that's out of print, but has been printed in the past? Well, if you make a reprint of a famous book, let's say the Luther Bible from 1600, 500 years old, what you have to do is you have to find if possible the very best example because they're all slightly different, it's not that they're all the same. It was just hundreds of years ago and some were colorized, others not, some are in a poor condition by now.

1:30:26Anyhow, you have to make sure there's a research to get the best famous edition. Then you have to work on the reproduction of this. But basically the book itself to reproduce it beside of the scans and as well how it's printed, the paper and all this. The work has been done by others many years ago. What you can do kind of as a gatekeeper to make it look as good as it gets 500 years later, 250 or whatever. So there is definitely some work involved. But the first real work was done. That's why it's a famous edition. Of course, you have to write a commentary and put it all into kind of historic context.

1:31:17But it is far less work than to do a new book and whatever the subject is because then you start from scratch and you have to fill 500 empty pages. Typically, how long is the process from when you have an idea for a book until it's ready to be printed? Look, the books we do, they have, let's say, from 100 to, let's say, 1000 pages. And it usually takes at least 12 months, but an average, I would say, 24 months to do something. Then of course, the production takes another six months, maybe three months. And do you tend to work with the same people over and over again? Yes, I love that. I mean, if it was a good experience, I love it.

1:32:12Have you ever published a Bible? Yes, we did even two versions. A Gutenberg Bible and the Luther or Bible. And the Gutenberg Bible was the very first printed book and it's something, of course, of incredible historic value. But it's not overwhelmingly illustrated or so. I mean, it's more ornamental, all of it. And the Luther Bible, which was always regarded as the Bible for all the people. And it was the first, which was as well not in Latin, but in this case in German. That is wonderfully richly illustrated, you know, when we talked about Frank Frazzetta. This is all in between Bosch and Frazzetta.

1:33:02And I don't know, the wildest stories you can't even imagine, or E .C. Comics. And it's artistically very beautifully done. And as well, the color, which are just amazing works of art, all of your books image -based. Yes. But that's the beginning. And from there on, we have to contextualize it, to bring it in explain what it is, what you see, and where it comes from. Let's say it's a monograph of an artist. But you can start look at the pictures. And from there on, you might get hooked and want to understand where it comes from, and what it is, what you see. I mean, to say it basically. But I would say maybe our books have, they are visually driven, no doubt at all.

1:34:04And the visuals we try to make as close to the original as we can, and keep the integrity of the picture, whether it's a photo or painting, not cut it. And yeah, make it as good as it is. And that requires very often that you have to refotograph everything in museums and wherever it is. Because otherwise you cannot have, there's a best possible reproduction. We just finished a book on Dali, which is an oversized, and it's kind of an anniversary edition because we did our first Dali book 40 years ago. And this year we have now a new book on Dali, a two -volume book on Dali coming out. And I remember we had to refotograph at least 150 paintings.

1:35:00And once you do this, you have to often even have to take some out of the frames. And it's for curators. I wouldn't say it's a nightmare, but it's definitely something. It's a lot of work. It's definitely something that I don't want to do too often. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But in the end, you can't really make it work. How has the technology changed from the first Dali book 40 years ago to now in terms of printing, in terms of getting renderings of the image? I think it changed dramatically. It doesn't say that you would not have had a great result, depending on what you did. I mean, the years ago, the black and white photography books often look better than they do today because some printing machines, they're just not in existence anymore.

1:35:55So not everything what is new is better necessarily. It's about the grain and the overall look, maybe comparable in music if you have an analog record compared to whatever is digital. And some people prefer definitely this version. Color photography is different. I could say we have more possibilities and you can do better than years ago. How did the books get written? Are you pitched or do you commission them? You pitched very often. But rarely do we have the pitch go into the next stage. So the vast majority of our books, we do, we have our idea how to make it work in these different formats and series.

1:36:54And we commission the authors and the designers and the team to make this happen. So that's different than most publishers, I would say. For sure. Yeah. I don't know anybody who does it like this. Yeah. The writers and photographers that you work with are in the service of the vision which is starting with passion. And that's unusual. I think most publishers, they acquire things that come from the outside. Not that we have a formula, but we have our ideas how it should work and how it should look like. Yeah. It's good or not different question that is, but maybe one I have it in a certain way in a certain style.

1:37:47Yeah. And for some artists or quite a number that works well and for others, probably not that I don't know. But the name of the company of the brand was for me always more important than anything else. Yeah. We tried to keep this in our hands. Let's put it this way. Do you think of the books as reference books? Yes, for sure. Yeah. Majority of our books, I would say, it's a reference book. Yeah. And once we work on a subject, we try to make it as comprehensive or as good as we can. Doesn't say that it works like this all the time, but at least we try. It's the intention. The intention is there.

1:38:33Yeah. But even after thousands of books, you still feel that. It's great. Definitely. Because I'm really grateful and happy that I can be in this for me the most exciting job. I did not lose any. Probably I have more, I'm more into it than I was even like 10, 20 or 30 years ago. Because right now I can focus more on it because I'm in the wonderful situation that my oldest daughter, Malena, runs for the last 10 years, all the operations. And so I can focus even better than I did before. And I have a more as a sparring partner at the same time. Fantastic. And that enables me as well to focus more on what I love to do in the first 10.

1:39:27And that is producing books. Yeah. Yeah. How do you decide if a book is going to be a limited edition collector's item expensive book versus a mass market book? Well, the subject defines it. If you have, if you work, let's say with a photographer, you only can do it with people who have a worldwide recognition and an herb behind it that supports this. We often don't know how it will end up because we have to dive into it and look into it. And so there was a story I heard about MGM, the film studio. They said that these people, they started to edit the film when it was cut already. But I like this idea.

1:40:17Although it is, although it makes not too much economic sense, but at least at that point stage, you understand what you're into. And before, at least for my perspective, I often do not know what I'm into. Yes. Because it requires to go and to work on a thing. And so, you see, by doing so, you understand, you see it may be different or want to add stuff or take out. So, yeah, we often edit our books very late, while they're done already. After the first edit, we make a complete different second one. Do you get as excited about an idea today as you would have 30 years ago? Yes, I would say so. No doubt.

1:41:09I am excited about everything which is exciting. What is exciting for me, like a young boy, maybe I never kept my wherever being 10 years old. I love it. I love when the books arrive, every book is always sent to our office in Los Angeles daily. And I love to keep it in my, to feel it, to smell it, to look at whatever you can check in the moment. And I see them like, well, I wouldn't say children, because I'd love the children more than anything else in my life, my wife, my children, or friends, poor dogs. But then the books come.

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