Matthias Schaller is a retrospective of Schaller s photography in book form, presenting all his major bodies of work from the last ten years such as the series  Studio Gursky (2000), documenting Andreas Gursky s Düsseldorf studio;  Die Mühle (2001 02), showing the studio-home of Bernd and Hilla Becher;  Controfacciata (2008), presenting colour-drained images of the interiors of Venetian palaces;  Purple Desk (2004 08), showing the personal desks of 30 cardinals of the Roman Curia;  Fratelli d Italia (2005 08), featuring 150 Italian opera houses; and  Disportraits (2008 09), a series of astronauts. Including thumbnail images of all these series and a bibliography, this book is the perfect entry-point to Schaller s oeuvre and a comprehensive summary of it. Matthias Schaller was born in Dillingen/Donau, Germany, in 1965, and today lives in Venice/Italy and New York City. Schaller studied cultural anthropology in Göttingen, Hamburg and Siena. He was a DAAD fellow in Rome and has exhibited internationally in solo shows at institutions including Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Biennale d Arte in Venice, the Picasso Museum in Münster, and Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro. Steidl has published Schaller s The Mill (2007), Controfacciata (2008) and Purple Desk (2009). Germano Celant is an internationally acclaimed author and curator acknowledged for his theories on Arte Povera. Celant has curated numerous exhibitions at many of the world s most prominent institutions, and has authored hundreds of publications, both books and catalogues. He is currently director of Fondazione Prada in Milan, curator of Fondazione Aldo Rossi in Milan and curator of Fondazione Emilio and Annabianca Vedova in Venice.