Contact

In this book we meet eleven different wild animals, including a fox, a beaver and a polar bear. The pictures are testimony and traces of bodily contact. Artist Michael Günzburger and printer Thomi Wolfensberger have developed a method of capturing an animal’s impression on a lithograph. The lithographs make every single hair on their heads, bodies and tails visible, portraying the animals with an uncanny directness and immediacy: their very energy can be physically felt. And they shed new light on the glaring contradictions in our relationship to creatures that we prize and persecute, fear and fondle. Contact is the fruit of Günzburger’s long exploration of line drawing, the line that both connects and divides, detaching details from their surroundings, which is the first prerequisite for the formation of an identity. A form of magic is at work in these pictures, the magic of physical contact, the magic of an encounter with the unknown. This is the first time Günzburger has teamed up with dramatist, essayist und novelist and long-time friend Lukas Bärfuss to produce a book. In Contact, Bärfuss takes us on an expedition up through northern woods all the way to the frozen wilderness of an island in the North Sea, exploring the history, geography and zoology of our surroundings as we go. His forays into the wild probe our primal yearning for — and fear of — contact with wild animals. No animals were harmed during the making of this book.