Perhaps that's what has always interested me most about TASCHEN: not just its catalog, but its way of presenting visual culture as something accessible and, at the same time, deeply desirable. The publishing house was founded in 1980 by Benedikt Taschen and over time became an international benchmark, capable of navigating between affordable publications and highly ambitious collector's editions, such as Helmut Newton's legendary SUMO.
My relationship with them was, for years, quite natural. I remember contacting the Spanish team, and they invited me to their showroom in Madrid, which was then a more private space, intended more for distributors and buyers. There, I began working with books by Peter Lindbergh, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Ellen von Unwerth, Mert Alas, and Marcus Piggott, among other names that have been constant references in my perspective. I sold several important pieces, ordered mock-ups for events, and started incorporating some titles into my own collection. Later, with The Collector pilot in Gijón, that relationship became more stable and clearer: them as a major publishing house; me as someone who didn't just want to sell books, but to create a small ritual around them. Furthermore, that connection doesn't just belong to the past. It remains present today at The Collector, where TASCHEN titles coexist, from more accessible editions to collector's items and Art Editions that continue to be part of our universe.
The current store in Madrid maintains that spirit very well. On Barquillo, there's something between a gallery, a bookstore, and a visual cabinet, with a contemporary intervention that doesn't erase the memory of the place. And perhaps that's why it continues to be so attractive to me: because it preserves that ability to display books not just as content, but as a presence.
