At the 2016 Brno Biennial, Wayne Daly and Adrien Vasquez exhibited A Shelf for Lothar, showcasing the stark covers of the Spektrum series designed by Lothar Reher. The display was not only a demonstration of a perfectly balanced graphic identity, but a step towards a clearer picture of the relatively unknown designer and the context in which he worked. This year, Daly and Vasquez worked together to produce the accompanying publication, Dressed In Black, which documents the shelf at Brno, with 1:1 reproductions of each book cover. The catalogue is wonderfully simple, allowing the reader to pour over the details of Reher’s photocollages and discover themes that link one haunting image to the next. Below I talk with Daly and Vasquez about their interest in the Spektrum series, the process of putting together the exhibition and publication, and details on the life and work of Lothar Reher.
Ben Schwartz (BS)
Can you talk about your first encounter with the Spektrum series? What was it that initially caught your eye?
Wayne Daly (WD) & Adrien Vasquez (AV)
We both found them in secondhand bookshops—a shop on London’s Edgware Road for Adrien, and an Antiquariat in Berlin for Wayne. We only discovered our mutual interest in the series a couple of years ago. Although they are of course beautifully designed paperbacks, what caught our attention at first were the black jackets and the committed photographic concept that makes them so consistently strong.
BS
At what point did your interest in the series go from a personal fascination to a decision to exhibit the covers?
WD & AV
Staging an exhibition wasn’t an immediate decision. Our intention at first was to research Reher’s work and to somehow find a way to make it visible to a larger audience. Not long after we started to think about this, the 27th Brno Biennial sent out an open call for its Off-Programme, which we decided to answer. Starting with an exhibition seemed like a good way into the subject and a chance to investigate modes of display, something we were also interested in tackling. The book extended out of this and explores similar ideas to the exhibition, albeit in a different format.
BS
What was the process like sourcing all of the books?
WD & AV
Our initial combined collection was small, maybe 15 titles in total. We were very lucky to find a German antiquariat who sold us around 180 books as a set, and with almost no duplicates. So we now have about two-thirds of the 279 published titles. This was quite a fast process, followed by a lengthier phase of editing the collection down to the 115 titles displayed in the exhibition.
BS
I really enjoyed Regine Ehleiter‘s essay, Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Exhibiting Books as it takes a deep-dive into modes of displaying books and introduces your shelf at Brno. Could you talk about the exhibition– the curation, arrangement, selection, etc.
WD & AV
The selection is taxonomical, based on recurring motifs in Reher’s photographs and montages (faces, animals, plants, statues, etc.), rather than referencing chronology or the books’ contents. This was our way of bringing our own point of view, as designers and collectors. Both Regine’s and Roland Früh’s essays were written in advance of the exhibition, and were essential in developing our ideas around the display format.
The shelf-like panel came quite early on in the exhibition concept as the most respectful way of showing the books, and its shape changed a few times to reflect the possibilities of the room provided to us by the Biennial. We were always conscious that these were mass-market paperbacks, intended to be widely distributed and consumed, so we didn’t want to be overly reverential in how they would be presented. A shelf which felt ordinary and domestic, made out of common materials, seemed more fitting. There are some concessions to exhibition conventions—as the focus was on the jacket designs, the books needed to face the viewer. A T-shaped rail system held the books in place, and allowed us to create a precise grid, something which also borrows from Reher’s design for Volk und Welt’s stand at the 1973 Leipzig book fair. Blank spaces act to separate each image category.
To counter the shelf, we also couldn’t resist showing the Spektrum covers that lie under the jackets—which are unprinted white card, with the exception of the title printed on the spine. Alongside one example of this, we also showed an open title page as a way to show that Reher’s careful execution of the series was a holistic one, not confined only to the jacket designs.
BS
Outside of the Spektrum series, what else is known about Reher?
WD & AV
There isn’t much published information about him or his work, which encouraged us to pursue this project.
Born in Marienburg in 1932, Reher trained as a typesetter in Berlin. After completing his apprenticeship in 1951, he started to work at Volk und Welt first as an assistant designer, then as a book designer. In 1964, shortly after the merger of Volk und Welt with another publisher, Kultur und Fortschritt, Reher took on the position of art director, and was given his own department with five designers and a secretary. He and his team were responsible for all graphic production: books and series (including Spektrum from 1968), advertising, and events such as the design of the Leipzig Book Fair stands. Reher managed to develop a strong presence, not only on the design side of things but also later gaining a place on the editorial board. The history of Volk und Welt is covered in the publication Fenster zur Welt: Eine Geschichte des DDR-Verlages Volk & Welt, which accompanied a comprehensive exhibition about the publisher.
In 1976 Reher left his full time position at Volk und Welt to work independently, but continued his relationship with the publisher, notably for Spektrum, alongside other work for clients, including his design for Reclam’s Universal Bibliothek (Philipp Reclam, 1982–1991). In 1992, his work was the subject of an exhibition and a catalogue, bringing together a selection of Reher’s book designs along with his work as an artist, a career he was pursuing in parallel—the cover features a marble paper work that is typical of this second practice. He still lives in Berlin.
Reher’s work was also covered more recently by Jan Wenzel (Spector Books) in an article published in Camera Austria 134, drawing parallels between the designs for Spektrum, the work of Christian Chruxin for das neue buch (Rowohlt, 1972–1986) and the photomontages of John Heartfield. Along with Chruxin’s work for das neue buch, Reher’s exclusive use of photography for Spektrum was somewhat unique for the time, in the context of a mass-produced book series.
BS
I’m curious about the context surrounding this series. In you introductory essay you compare the Spektrum series to its “West German brethren,” the Suhrkamp and the Rowohlt series. While all of them retain a tight sense of identity, aesthetically they each seem reflective of their respective political situation. How do you think the situation in East Germany affected Reher’s design?
WD & AV
That’s a hard thing to answer. From a practical point of view, Reher’s decision to use black-and-white photography was to give him autonomy over production. He taught himself photography, took all the pictures and developed them in his own dark room, allowing complete control over the final outcome. This wouldn’t have been possible with more expensive color film, which was hard to come by in East Germany and of poor quality. So these circumstances did push him in a certain direction, but the rest is down to his design sensibility and how he injected his personal interests and interpretation into this body of literature. His other work outside of Spektrum was often more colorful—for instance, in his career as an artist he experimented with marble paper making. We would be cautious to overstate that the political climate in the GDR had any kind of overt influence on the relative starkness of the series’ design.
BS
After learning about Reher, I began to look for any connections between him and Klaus Wittkugel (1910–1985), another relatively unknown designer from East Germany (who in 2016 was the subject of a show at P!). Do you see any similarities between the two figures?
WD & AV
We unfortunately don’t know much about Wittkugel’s work, and it’s something we would like to look further into, as he is an important figure from the East German design scene. Reher and Wittkugel would have known each other, as they were colleagues—Wittkugel designed several covers for Volk und Welt as well as their great logotype which Reher, in his role as Volk und Welt’s art director, never changed and always displayed quite prominently on the covers he designed. Wittkugel also used photography in his work, so it is not unlikely that he could have influenced Reher in that way.
BS
Looking at it from a contemporary context, what are your thoughts on such a tight design system. There is clearly a reaction against this sort of consistency today with more flexible identities, yet there is something to be said about Reher’s ability to make each title feel unique with highly consistent elements.
WD & AV
We feel that the perceived tightness of Spektrum’s design, rather than being a constraint, allowed Reher to focus on and develop his photographic work, which is very disparate and rich. His pragmatic approach to design shouldn’t hide the fact that he was very sensible and conscious of his pictorial choices, and we regard his work on Spektrum as a highly personal and distinctive take on a considerable body of literature, which is not something that can be said for many book collections of this scale.
BS
Do you have any favorite covers from the Spektrum series?
WD
It changes every time I revisit the collection. Right now, I like Was Sie schon immer über Sex wissen wollten, aber nie zu fragen wagten by Woody Allen, especially the way the pointing finger invades the title lock-up (Spektrum 227).
AV
If I had to chose a single one, it would be Südkurier by Antoine de St Éxupéry (Spektrum 14). I have a preference for the books I also read and liked, as I can better understand and appreciate what Reher aimed to achieve.
BS
Do you have any upcoming projects you are excited about?
WD
Myself and my studio partner, Claire Lyon, are working on a catalogue for Ryan Gander to accompany an exhibition at the soon-to-open Remai Modern in Saskatoon. We’re also developing a new identity for John Hansard Gallery, a public art space in Southampton, England.
WD & AV
An upcoming book for Raven Row on German artist KP Brehmer designed at John Morgan studio.
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Purchase Dressed in Black from Precinct.
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