The reader can really feel the cold when looking at the photos Gerhard Richter brought back with him from a trip to Greenland in 1972. Stretches of ice and snow, screes and rugged cliffs, icebergs and floes, reflected in grey-blue water. Many of these motifs can found in his paintings.

The book is made up of three compositional elements of equal size – photo, text, empty space – each 8.5 x 13 cm. Richter has organised these elements such that the book works from both ends: the reader decides where the text begins. Its orientation is simple, but the effect of the double pages, sometimes with upside-down photos, is full of optical surprises.

Eis is another in the series of autonomous artist’s books, to which Richter has dedicated much time and great artistic attention over the past few years.

German text.