Rudolph Edse : Annintentional autobiography = Une autobiographie involontaire

A few slides found on the Net—self-portraits of a man surrounded by the attributes of photography—were the trigger that gave rise to this book. For a number of years Michel Campeau had been buying photographs on eBay, making his choices entirely subjectively, as if he himself were pointing his camera at a boundless universe. Intrigued by these self-portraits, the artist-collector set about acquiring all the images he could find by the unknown photographer. He was finally able to purchase the entire archive of work by Rudolph Edse (Hamburg, Germany, 1913- Worthington, Ohio 1998) from a dealer who had begun selling its contents individually. It was the images of a man practicing photography that had first attracted Campeau, who is interested in masculine sensibilities that echo his own. But he was subsequently thrilled to discover that Edse had devoted much of his leisure time to documenting his family life. With an ordinary amateur photographer the results would hardly have been unusual, but in this case the images were skilfully composed and the story they told apparently perfect.