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The books shown are rarely available in regular shops, but are picked up in thrift stores and from antiquaries. The group’s fascination for these pictorial non-fiction books comes from the need to find images that exist on the fringe of regular commercial photo books. Paul Kooiker and Erik Kessels have made a selection of their finest books from within this questionable new genre. Incredibly small photobooks is the second volume (after Terribly awesome photobooks) showing this amazing collection.

Highly Uncomfortable Photo Books is the third publication in a sequel of Kooiker’s and Kessels’s collection of unconventional photo books. After ‘Terribly Awesome Photo Books’ and ‘Incredibly Small Photo Books’, this publication focusses on books that are barely watchable because of its controversial nature. Shown are books about sex, war, propaganda, medicine and balloons. 

Inspired by the early style of Corbusier and ideas on Mediterranean architecture espoused by the likes of Bernard Rudofsky and Josep Lluís Sert, a younger generation of architects found the perfect conditions to explore the future of the Mediterranean house in Cadaqués—a small fishing village on the Spanish Costa Brava that was also home, or the summer meeting ground, for some of the past century’s greatest artistic figures, including Dalí, Picasso, Miró, and Duchamp. In this new book, photos from the period show the distinctive style and environment of Cadaqués and 22 homes designed by Federico Correa, Alfonso Milà, José Antonio Coderch, Francesc Joan Barba Corsini, Peter Harnden, Lanfranco Bombelli, Oscar Tusquets, and Lluís Clotet. Written and edited by Nacho Alegre, it features an introduction by Oscar Tusquets and afterword by Marc Arnal also tells of the friendships and influences that existed between this group of architects, and how their architecture came to be.

Apartamento is excited to re-release Paris Living Rooms almost two decades after it was first published in 2002. The second instalment in Dominique Nabokov’s holy trinity of interior photography works, it also follows the re-release of New York Living Rooms earlier this year. Nabokov calls these images her interior ‘portraits’ and across 132 pages we’re offered an intimate study of Parisian society from the early 2000s, with the living spaces of Yves Saint Laurent, Nan Goldin, Gérard Depardieu, Carine Roitfeld, Yvon Lambert, and Andrée Putman, plus many others, featured throughout. With nothing added and nothing altered, Nabokov simply records these spaces for her fellow voyeurs and leaves us to decipher the rest. Long out of print, this updated edition brings back to life an era of the city’s history, seen through Nabokov’s original Polaroid photos, together with the original introduction by the late interior designer Andrée Putman. The third and final instalment in the series, set in Berlin, will be re-issued by Apartamento later in 2021.

In Dark Matter - Monogram 1, Ron Jude reinterprets news images from his hometown in Idaho through photography. In particular, he explores how these visuals can be used to reflect the moods and collective values of a specific microcosm. Feeling a genuine sense of unease and perplexity in the face of the cultural divide in the United States, Ron Jude structures his photographic narrative around a loop of images to evoke the latent undercurrents of this general mood. Dark Matter is thus both a self-reflective meditation on how cultural context shapes one’s sense of self, and an examination of how photography, as a mass medium, reflects and reinforces shared perceptions and attitudes.

Dalí was always working wherever he was and any time of year, but painting, in the sense of undertaking large-scale works in oil, was something he only did in Portlligat in summer … Its true ecstasy came with the summer heat.

Casa Dalí opens up Salvador Dalí’s home on the shores of Spain’s Costa Brava, with photos by Coco Capitán offering a rare glimpse of the artist’s surreal house and workshop. Purchased by Dalí in the early 1930s, the house served as the artist’s primary residence and workspace, the birthplace of some of his most famous paintings, including The Persistence of Memory.

A special introduction by architect Oscar Tusquets Blanca recounts his 15-year friendship with Dalí, while exclusive new photos by Coco Capitán capture the artist’s home in the same golden light that drew him to the Mediterranean village of Portlligat, where he ‘claimed that he was the first Spaniard to see the sun rise’. Coco’s photos lure readers into the grandeur of the artist’s home as a site of active creation—both of life and of art—where the worn ephemera of Dalí’s studio appear alongside images of his infamous taxidermy collection, the iconic couch modelled after Mae West’s mouth, and the distinctive white exteriors that also shaped one of our best sellers, The Modern Architecture of Cadaqués: 1955–71.

An original poem by Coco, written at the time she photographed the house, adorns the front and back covers, emblematic of her introspective approach to a practice that defies a single medium. Through these firsthand accounts, Casa Dalí grants special access to an eccentric space that stands as its own Dalinian creation, both witness and inspiration to the artist’s definitive style.

Overlooking an unreal landscape, sea and sky blend together. Elsa’s Saracen tower stands formidable amidst a shrubland… In the distance, a string of other Saracen towers as far as the eye can see. —Dominique Nabokov

Step into wonder: The Italian Interiors of Elsa Peretti charts a voyage through two sumptuous homes of the late artist whose designs completely reshaped jewelery in the 20th century and are still worn by the world’s biggest stars today. Capturing the terracotta glow of these spaces, Estelle Hanania’s ethereal photography introduces us to the wilds of Torre Avoltore, a towering residence in Porto Ercole, and invites us to retire to stately Rome, where Elsa grew up.

An introductory essay by longtime collaborator Stefano Palumbo centres Elsa’s creative relationship with architect and designer Lorenzo Mongiardino, and a brief dispatch from photographer Dominique Nabokov closes the book with a memory of her 2001 visit to the tower. Made in close collaboration with the Nando and Elsa Peretti Foundation, The Italian Interiors of Elsa Peretti is the first book exclusively dedicated to her interiors and homes in Italy, offering a privileged view into spaces not open to the public. Still brimming with Elsa’s personal collection of clothing and artwork, the Rome apartment was photographed the day before it was sold, making these images the last to capture how she translated her artistic sensibilities into her private world.

The nights are long here, always with a hint of breeze coming from the sea, even on the stickiest of evenings. At 7 in the morning, at the height of the afternoon heat, or well past midnight, something is bound to be open somewhere on this island. Time has a different meaning here. —Tash Aw

Welcome to Penang: Recipes & Wanderings Around an Island in Malaysia, the second volume in Apartamento and Belmond’s new series. A cookbook as well as a cultural tour, Penang serves as your window to a unique culinary cosmos where spice-laden air meets the sea breeze and the hum of island life drums from markets to family kitchens. Chef André Chiang, culinary director of the Eastern & Oriental Express, along with chefs Malcolm Lee and Abby Lee, offer recipes for 23 quintessential Malaysian dishes—from tangy Assam Laksa to a sweet Three-layer Rice Pudding recipe by Kirthanna Naidu, and all the tasty bites in between. Vibrant photographs by Luo Yang and essays by Tash Aw, Anna Sulan Masing, and Kirthanaa Naidu guide readers across regional landmarks, from family-run nutmeg plantations to durian farms perched high on jungle-clad hills. Part invitation and part visual ode, this volume is a tribute to the island’s unforgettable mosaic of flavours.

This beautifully designed collaboration between Belmond and Apartamento magazine is part cookbook…part cultural tour that takes you to the heart of this vibrant island. —Service95

Between 1999 and 2006, before fast fashion and social media changed the world forever, Kyoichi Tsuzuki published 87 instalments of his Happy Victims series in the fashion magazine Ryuko Tsushin. In cramped quarters across Tokyo, these anonymous disciples joyously detailed the ritual and the sacrifice of their brand-name obsessions. A Buddhist monk with a Comme des Garçons shopping habit, an Alexander McQueen collector listening to neighbours through paper-thin walls—photographed at home, their collections before them, Kyoichi’s anti-heroes exist in parallel to the fashion universe of fame, fantasy, and glamour. Happy Victims was first published in book form in 2008. Long out of print, this edition follows Apartamento’s reissue of Kyoichi’s earlier seminal work, Tokyo Style. The new hardcover design comes with an updated foreword by the author, Japanese photographer Kyoichi Tsuzuki, and an introduction by Isabella Burley of Climax Books.

While the cover and belly band have been completely reworked, in collaboration with designer Han Gao, the book’s interior maintains a simple, documental format: one happy victim per spread, Kyoichi’s photos supplemented by a short commentary on the individual and his or her daily schedule. Not typically members of the leisure class, the goths, Lolitas, and stringent Margiela fans must also go to work and find time to care for their clothes. 

Between 1999 and 2006, before fast fashion and social media changed the world forever, Kyoichi Tsuzuki published 87 instalments of his Happy Victims series in the fashion magazine Ryuko Tsushin. In cramped quarters across Tokyo, these anonymous disciples joyously detailed the ritual and the sacrifice of their brand-name obsessions. A Buddhist monk with a Comme des Garçons shopping habit, an Alexander McQueen collector listening to neighbours through paper-thin walls—photographed at home, their collections before them, Kyoichi’s anti-heroes exist in parallel to the fashion universe of fame, fantasy, and glamour. Happy Victims was first published in book form in 2008. Long out of print, this edition follows Apartamento’s reissue of Kyoichi’s earlier seminal work, Tokyo Style. The new hardcover design comes with an updated foreword by the author, Japanese photographer Kyoichi Tsuzuki, and an introduction by Isabella Burley of Climax Books.

While the cover and belly band have been completely reworked, in collaboration with designer Han Gao, the book’s interior maintains a simple, documental format: one happy victim per spread, Kyoichi’s photos supplemented by a short commentary on the individual and his or her daily schedule. Not typically members of the leisure class, the goths, Lolitas, and stringent Margiela fans must also go to work and find time to care for their clothes.