Distance and Desire offers new perspectives on the African archive, reimagining its diverse histories and changing meanings. Presenting an extraordinary range of portraits, cartes de visite, postcards and album pages from Southern and Eastern Africa, as well as recent photography and video art.

The Walther Collection' is one of the most prominent international collections of African photography. This three-volume work represents the culmination of the collection's multi-year exhibition and publishing program, investigating African photography and video through the themes of portraiture, landscape, and the historic archive. 3 Vols. in slipcase: Vol. I: Events of the self : portraiture and social identity. Vol. II: Appropriated landscapes. Vol. III: Distance and desire : encounters with the African archive.

Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art from The Walther Collection unites the perspectives of 14 contemporary artists of African descent, who investigate social identity, questions of belonging, and an array of sociopolitical concerns--including migration, lineage, the legacies of colonialism and Calvinism, and local custom--as well as personal experiences in Africa and the African diaspora. By highlighting specific creative approaches and studying the sites and collective platforms that enable these practices, this book examines the critical mass that has gathered across generations of African image-makers and lens-based artists. In accentuating different perspectives within this generation and considering the infrastructures that often link them, Recent Histories provides a point of entry to engage critically with current practices, and opens up considerations about how to conceptualize the frameworks of contemporary African photography and video art. The Walther Collection is pleased to present Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art, its fourth exhibition and publication dedicated to African photography and video art. This project is the culmination of sustained research, also facilitated by virtual and digital frameworks; a three-part exhibition series at The Walther Collection Project Space in New York; and the international symposium Beyond the Frame: Contemporary Photography from Africa and the Diaspora, co-organized by The Walther Collection and Columbia University. Artur Walther

As a crucial extension of its ongoing investigation of vernacular photography, the Walther Collection has collaborated with key scholars and critical thinkers in the history of photography, women's studies, queer theory, Africana studies, and curatorial practice to interrogate vernacular's theoretical limits, as well as to conduct case studies of a striking array of objects and images, many from the collection's holdings.

The Walther Collection is a private international art collection dedicated to collecting and exhibiting contemporary photography with special emphasis on the works of African and Asian artists. The inaugural exhibition of the collection will open to the public in June 2010 in the village of Burlafingen near Ulm, Germany.

This book shows a series of portraits found in the trash bin of the "Gulu Real Art Studio," the oldest photographic studio in Gulu, Northern Uganda. The studio only has a machine that makes four ID images at a time, a number that most clients cannot afford, so the photographer takes single analog pictures, punches out the head with a special device, and discards the rest. In these faceless prints, one's focus shifts to the subject's individual posture and clothing, forming a typological portrayal of a community. Martina Bacigalupo also interviewed clients of Gulu, and their stories, many deeply moving, describe the political, economic, and social conditions common to contemporary East Africa.