On August 17 Martin Hall’s long-awaited book 1971-1985 will be published – his first in five years. The publication is an autobiographical depiction of his formative years as a boy and a young man.

The book is released by Tiderne Skifter (a subsidiary of Gyldendal releasing the works of authors such as W.G. Sebald, Jean Rhys and David Lynch). The publishers write the following about the book:
 
“1971-1985 is a high-speed portrait of the Danish artist Martin Hall’s childhood and early youth, a teenage chronicle that focuses on a period of great personal and cultural impact in a rampant Copenhagen.

From the rough black-and-white photos of the seventies to the following decade’s Polaroid pictures, from glam rock to punk and from Madame Arthur to Rockmaskinen at Christiania – the journey is long from General Franco’s catholic Spain, where Martin Hall lived as a young boy, to the liberated sex shops of Vesterbrogade.

Written in a simple, yet figurative language, he describes his parents’ reckless sense of adventure and the ruthlessness that characterized his adolescence, the alcoholic culture the seventies were soaked in as well as the sexuality and the political climate of the period.

As a new generation cuts through previous norms and values, Hall’s personal journey and following formation as an artist during the early eighties reveals a story of great personal hope and tragedy, spiritual ferocity and loss.”

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The book amounts to 248 pages and is released with support of The Danish Arts Foundation.