Der international renommierte Künstler und Fotograf Hiroshi Sugimoto hat durch seine ausgiebigen Erkundungen der Möglichkeiten von Fotografie einige der verführerischsten und rätselhaftesten Bildwerke unserer Zeit geschaffen. Hiroshi Sugimoto: Time Machine bietet einen umfassenden Überblick über die Arbeiten der letzten fünf Jahrzehnte. Die Publikation vereint seine wichtigsten fotografischen Serien wie Theaters und Seascapes, bis zu weniger bekannten Werken, die seinen innovativen, konzeptionellen Ansatz beleuchten. Beiträge von internationalen Schriftsteller*innen, Künstler*innen und Wissenschaftler*innen – darunter James Attlee, Allie Biswas, David Chipperfield, Edmund de Waal, Mami Kataoka, Ralph Rugoff, Lara Strongman und Margaret Wertheim – beleuchten seine philosophische und zugleich spielerische Auseinandersetzung mit unserem Verständnis von Zeit und Erinnerung sowie dem paradoxen Charakter der Fotografie zwischen Dokumentation und Erfindung.

2010年度 Costa Book Awards 最佳传记奖获得者

A handful of clay from a Chinese hillside carries a promise: that mixed with the right materials, it might survive the fire of the kiln, and fuse into porcelain – translucent, luminous, white.
Acclaimed writer and potter Edmund de Waal sets out on a quest - a journey that begins in the dusty city of Jingdezhen in China and travels on to Venice, Versailles, Dublin, Dresden, the Appalachian Mountains of South Carolina and the hills of Cornwall to tell the history of porcelain. Along the way, he meets the witnesses to its creation; those who were inspired, made rich or heartsick by it, and the many whose livelihoods, minds and bodies were broken by this obsession. It spans a thousand years and reaches into some of the most tragic moments of recent times.
In these intimate and compelling encounters with the people and landscapes who made porcelain, Edmund de Waal enriches his understanding of this rare material, the ‘white gold’ he has worked with for decades.

Extraordinary new non-fiction, a gripping blend of history and memoir, by the author of the award-winning and bestselling international sensation, 'The Hare with Amber Eyes'.
In 'The White Road', bestselling author and artist Edmund de Waal gives us an intimate narrative history of his lifelong obsession with porcelain, or "white gold." A potter who has been working with porcelain for more than forty years, de Waal describes how he set out on five journeys to places where porcelain was dreamed about, refined, collected and coveted - and that would help him understand the clay's mysterious allure. From his studio in London, he starts by travelling to three "white hills" - sites in China, Germany and England that are key to porcelain's creation. But his search eventually takes him around the globe and reveals more than a history of cups and figurines; rather, he is forced to confront some of the darkest moments of twentieth-century history.
Part memoir, part history, part detective story, 'The White Road' chronicles a global obsession with alchemy, art, wealth, craft and purity. In a sweeping yet intimate style that recalls 'The Hare with Amber Eyes', de Waal gives us a singular understanding of "the spectrum of porcelain" and the mapping of desire.
★Review★
"[A] shimmering paean to porcelain . . . De Waal digs deep into the substance of his live, and what he shares is precious." ―Jean Zimmerman, NPR
“De Waal is a master of telling stories through material objects. He can see a vase and not only imagine the kind of room it once inhabited but the type of woman who might have brushed her fingertips across its lip . . . It’s de Waal’s own obsession―the man counts pots when he can’t sleep at night―that infuses the narrative with a true sense of the hunt . . . He is wonderfully manic in his research . . . He allows himself to get lost for weeks, to travel someplace only to return empty-handed―which makes for a true adventure and a pleasure to read.” ―Thessaly La Force, The New Yorker
“The White Road is filled with marvelous examples of storytelling, and de Waal has a gift for inhabiting his characters. Also, the historical material is interleaved with stories from de Waal’s own life as a ceramicist, which adds an extra and very welcome dimension to the tale.”―Christina Thompson, The Boston Globe
“At once meditation, memoir, and travelogue as well as history, The White Road is one of those unclassifiable books that simply astounds with the author’s infectious love of his subject . . . De Waal’s prose is both elegant and powerful . . . Despite covering so many places, so many historical periods, and so many themes, de Waal’s beautiful narrative voice and his love for his subject manage to shape this book into an almost seamlessly formed whole. Which leaves me with my one resentment regarding The White Road: It’s damned unfair that such a distinguished artist should also be such a great writer.” ―Kevin O’Kelly, The Christian Science Monitor
“De Waal reveals the depths and permutations of his life-shaping fascination with porcelain . . . [He] brings a historian’s ardor for detail and a poet’s gifts for close observation and radiant distillation to this exquisite chronicle of his extensive porcelain investigations . . . De Waal’s passionately and elegantly elucidated story of porcelain, laced with memoir and travelogue, serves as a portal into the madness and transcendence of our covetous obsession with beauty.” ―Donna Seaman, Booklist (starred review)
“A lyrical melding of art history, memoir, and philosophical meditation . . . In short passages of allusive, radiant prose, [de Waal] chronicles his journeys in search of both the materials and the history of porcelain, discovering along the way men as obsessed as he . . . De Waal's poetically recounted journey is a revelation.” ―Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“[De Waal] blends art history and personal travelogue in this immersive hands-on study of porcelain and its commercial and artistic appeal over the centuries . . . He enlivens his account with portraits of the people whose quirky personalities and entrepreneurial zeal advanced the manufacture of porcelain across Europe . . . A truly remarkable story.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“An immensely enjoyable meditation on what happens when the right mix of stone and clay enter the incandescent heat of a kiln . . . Journeying to Jingdezhen, Dresden, South Carolina, and southwest England, de Waal tells the story of determined experimenters who reproduced the magic the Chinese had mastered . . . [A] page-turning account, both sweeping and intimate.” ―Library Journal

264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them larger than a matchbox: potter Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in the Tokyo apartment of his great uncle Iggie. Later, when Edmund inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger than he could ever have imagined...The Ephrussis came from Odessa, and at one time were the largest grain exporters in the world; in the 1870s, Charles Ephrussi was part of a wealthy new generation settling in Paris. Charles's passion was collecting; the netsuke, bought when Japanese objets were all the rage in the salons, were sent as a wedding present to his banker cousin in Vienna. Later, three children - including a young Ignace - would play with the netsuke as history reverberated around them. The Anschluss and Second World War swept the Ephrussis to the brink of oblivion. Almost all that remained of their vast empire was the netsuke collection, dramatically saved by a loyal maid when their huge Viennese palace was occupied. In this stunningly original memoir, Edmund de Waal travels the world to stand in the great buildings his forebears once inhabited. He traces the network of a remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century and tells the story of a unique collection.

An Economist Book of the Year Costa Book Award Winner for Biography Galaxy National Book Award Winner (New Writer of the Year Award) Edmund de Waal is a world-famous ceramicist. Having spent thirty years making beautiful pots—which are then sold, collected, and handed on—he has a particular sense of the secret lives of objects. When he inherited a collection of 264 tiny Japanese wood and ivory carvings, called netsuke, he wanted to know who had touched and held them, and how the collection had managed to survive. And so begins this extraordinarily moving memoir and detective story as de Waal discovers both the story of the netsuke and of his family, the Ephrussis, over five generations. A nineteenth-century banking dynasty in Paris and Vienna, the Ephrussis were as rich and respected as the Rothchilds. Yet by the end of the World War II, when the netsuke were hidden from the Nazis in Vienna, this collection of very small carvings was all that remained of their vast empire.