SONGS FOR BIRDS AND THE LONELY 

Works by Dietmar Busse

Text by Claudia Summers

Book design Michela Palermo

40 color plates on uncoated paper 

Dimension 23x28 cm 

First edition: September 2024

600 copies 

Printed in Italy

Available to preorder - this title is due to ship in October 2024

Dietmar Busse, who currently resides and works in New York, was born in Stolzenau, Germany. He first encountered the world of photography in Madrid as a young man before moving to New York in 1991, where his work has continued to evolve and captivate audiences worldwide. Songs for Birds and the Lonely is a tribute to Busse’s remarkable ability to capture the delicate interplay between solitude and connection, nature and the human gaze. Through his lens, portraits are transformed into profound visual poetry, reflecting a deep sensitivity to his subjects and the world he depicts around them. This book offers a compelling collection of images that resonate with haunting beauty and a quiet sense of introspection, showcasing Busse's extraordinary talent in contemporary portraiture.

Susan Sontag once noted, “The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.” Busse’s chimerical photographs transcend this division, which is no longer applicable in our contemporary world in which the truth of reality is often questioned.  Busse paints where photographic realism can no longer take us. His constructed fictions over photography’s realism explore the tension and complicated relationship between objective and subjective truth and fiction. There is a healing transformation at work in these photographic fictions, which perhaps illuminates greater truth than more formal realistic representations. From the Afterword by Claudia Summers.

Dietmar Busse is based in New York. His work has appeared in magazines such as Elle, Frank, It, Harper’s Bazaar, Out, Paper, Surface, Trace, Visionaire, Vogue, and the New York Times. He has developed campaigns for Matsuda and documented runway shows for Bernadette Corporation, among many others. Recent exhibitions include the solo show Garden at Fierman (2023) and Labor of Love at Rachel Uffner Gallery (2023), both in New York.