Tino Zimmermann: Developments (signed)

Tino Zimmermann‘s spectacular debut, „Developments“, isn‘t the socio-documentary milieu study it appears to be at first glance. It‘s a photographic novel — not in the quirky, comic-like sense, but in a profound, well-orchestrated, unheard-of way. The narrative unfolds through a series of developments: Drugstore photo envelopes from a private archive that came into being after one discharged himself from a psychiatric ward, discovering photography as a means of self-therapy.

These amateur-photographic storage vessels chronologically release bits of information the reader must pay close attention to. And then the bigger picture emerges: One that's depressing and melancholic, exposing the occasional ray of hope as nothing but a mirage. But there are profound insights at the bottom of it: The intertwinings of mental illness, societal rejection, the hardships of creatively inclined youth in working-class environments, substance abuse issues and the mechanisms of depression — all these are important points of focus for Zimmermann.

A unique and complex artist‘s book, with each copy hand-finished, marks an astonishing one-man effort that likely could not have been realized like this by a large publishing house.