The genre of companybooks is extremly diverse. When talking about photobooks, the photos must be leading and the quota of photos has to be significantly high. Company books are created for very different reasons: for company anniversaries, for opening new buildings, as instructions for use, catalogs and product presentations, for advertising, for propaganda and as part of sponsorship, as gifts for customers, business friends and factory visitors or as documentation of work processes. Such books have been created since the end of the 19th century from all conceivable industries as raw material extraction, transportation, trade, production and service.
The amount of photo-illustrated companybooks cannot be overlooked. Some of them are extraordinary attractive in photography and design. Bart Sorgedrager and Thomas Wiegand will work out the main features of companybooks as photobooks in a joint lecture and exhibition.
Bart Sorgedrager is a photographer based in Amsterdam specialized in corporate documentaries. He is also a collector of companybooks and the editor of an upcoming book Factoryphotobooks on the history of these publications. Above all, he will focus on his own work as a photobook author and his sources of inspiration.
Thomas Wiegand is a photographer and art historian in Kassel. Most recently he studied the company books of Dr. Wolff & Tritschler and Willy Roerts. He will offer a brief introduction into the history of the German photo-illustrated companybook.
