25 years ago, on Sept 15 1999, we published our first collaborative zine: Die erste Frau Böhm (already including a drawing of a walk btw). We will celebrate this with two new books, three new zines, new portrait-zines by Oliver Sieber, a limited edition of »9 walks 9 books« and more. Books will be released in November in Paris.

Publications have always been a fundamental part in our artistic practice. The very first Böhm issue we published in an edition of 35 copies with only four pages and a sticker. At the beginning we published images from the archive. Later we juxtaposed images of each of our projects under a main title. From issue #6 we organised release events in Düsseldorf, at a golf court, in a suite of Hotel Nikko, at the International Library, in a church, in a fake office of a governmental building. In 2003 we hosted a first virtual event supposedly in Brasilia. And in 2004 we created the first mapping of all the issues, events and exhibitions until then.

For edition 17, 17b and 20b we decided to work on our first collaborative series: OiF/Original in Farbe about movie locations, memory and images in your head. Also about reproduction and collection. We also created a video. OiF was exhibited at Hypermarche by Oliver Cablat and Sebastian Hau in Arles, later at Florence Loewy in Paris.

The first printer we used was an Epson Stylus Pro 1200 and the Ilford double sided paper. We produced the issue as print on demand. We soon increased the print run of each issue to 3 times 35 issues, numbered and sometimes signed. And we published our first website in Dec 2000 as a small HTML webpage. (our current website still lists all issues ever published: www.boehmkobayashi.de)
The first place which sold the Böhm Issues was Printed Matter in New York, still one of the most important and influential place for artists working with books, artist books, zines, editions and ephemera. Later we participated at the New York Artbook Fair at the PS1 in 2009 and 2010.

OiF (#20b) and True Copy (#40) where the first issues we produced with a black and white laser printer. True Copy, the China issue was dealing with questions of copying, actually we made a „cheap Chinese copy“ of issue #3 (an issue about uniqueness). With the help of Lico Fang we got our own Chinese personal truecopy stamp in a small shop in Beijing. For this issue we created a glossary including all kind of references, a kind of an Encyclopedia or a Library reference catalogue – a strategy we use ever since.

In 2003 we opened the Böhm Megastore for two weeks. »Not only was the 19th issue of her photo magazine ‘Die Böhm’ produced and sold there — in addition, a temporary gallery was created in the shop, which is both a quiet comment of the marketing strategies of art, as well as an exhibition of works and, last but not least, an opportunity to buy original photographs, from small formats to large images. A ‘financing plan’ helps here, enabling younger buyers in particular to purchase originals by instalments. […] The Megastore organises daily ‘special promotions’. These include the internet auction of a photo, […] T-shirts were printed in the ‘Design Outlet’, products were offered like this laminated disposable camera.«

The Polaroid Corporation was declared bankrupt in 2001. We bought a passport-photo-camera with 4 lenses, some last original Polaroid material and invited people to an »Instant Party«. We made photographs of each of them and published Böhm #13 in Jan 2002.

In 2010 we published the BoehmKobayashi Encyclopedia: 
A very personal encyclopedia: 
About us,
about everything we did,
about everywhere we’ve been,
about places we exhibited at,
about places where we talked,
about ideas we think about,
about all the projects.
About artists we adore,
about artists we exhibited [with],
about movies we love,
about music we listen to,
about books we read,
about ideas we agree with.
About people who are connected
to Böhm/Kobayashi,

There was an update in 2011. And even an edited „Exhibition Digest“ for our exhibition »Our House« at the Museum for Photographie in Braunschweig. We used some pages of this digest as wall texts as part of the exhibition. 

No. 25 »Product of Spain« was released in Madrid. „We moved production abroad“ was the idea. The issue included Images of empty shops in Madrid and various packaging for computers and printers, stuff we used.
At the same time we started the Böhm Tradecenter, an online exhibition space made out of virtual trade containers. Until 2009 we showed exhibitions by 28 artists, incl. photography, video, installation, photobooks and more. Previous ANTiFOTO we already used the web to introduce artists and works we like to a broader audience.
We also realised events in real containers, like at PhotoEspana in Madrid in 2005 or in Düsseldorf as part of an Off-space-festival in 2007. At the Tradecenter we exhibited for example: Frederik Busch, Antenna Group Kyoto, Ryudai Takano, Petra Warrass, Joseph Danoune, Gluklya &Tsaplya, Bertien van Manen, Nick Haymes, Stefan Panhans, Awoiska van der Molen and many more.

For issue #42 we printed two blue-back posters. Title: »1600 ASA und Blume». That’s for lazy photographers who don’t care too much and use analogue compact cameras. I think Oliver found the Superia in our fridge or in the un-used lab. Can’t remember if he ever exposed and/or developed it. And for the photo he bought one of the last old-school gradient-backgrounds. (A photo of this re-appears later in several series, incl. »Fax from the Library«.)

more to come…