I wrote this text on the 6th of February, 2024. It was the day when a new shipment from Germany (from Taschen Publishing House) arrived.
A few days ago, there was a sale on the Taschen website. Thus, I decided to buy four books about The Rolling Stones, witchcraft, a history of photography, and Los Angeles (“Dark City. The real Los Angeles Noir.”). In today’s text, I want to stress that Taschen is a valid point of reference for me (and probably millions of others). Still, it does not mean Taschen does not make mistakes. For example, I wrote about two in my previous posts: “A Book About Angela Merkel,” when I wrote that Taschen paid tribute to the German chancellor who for sixteen years fed Putin’s regime with billions of EURO for buying gas) and “Why I Won’t Ever Buy Taschen’s “100 Movies of the 2010s”,” where I stated that Taschen published this copy too early, that approximately two years after the decade ended.
These two examples do not mean that most of the Taschen books are genuine masterpieces, works of art embedded with paper.
Pictures and texts in Taschen’s books are on the highest possible level. These books provide me with infinite numbers of inspiration. Does it mean I plan to hold all Taschen books on my bookshelf until the end of my life? No. The truth is that I’ve already donated to the public library with, among others, German publishing house copies. Yesterday, I gave seventeen books to my friends from the office (I will share a picture of the given books within the next few days). Five of these books were by Taschen. Still, Taschen is one of the best European (or, rather worldwide) publishing houses, among English Phaidon, Thames, and Hudson, and Polish Bosz (if you doubt in the last one, try one of the albums published about Zdzislaw Beksinski; available in English). I will stop reading and look closer at my new copies. That’s enough about Taschen Publishing House.
