At home with Benedikt Taschen

The German book publisher who lives in (and below) the Chemosphere house in the Studio City hills is profiled today by the Wall Street Journal.

Just like the scavengers in these Hollywood hills, Mr. Taschen is well aware of those circling and waiting for the right moment to pounce. Not many publishers can be heralded and begrudged at the same time as vigorously as he has over the past 30 years. He doesn't adhere to rules; he makes his own. Mr. Taschen, who turns 50 this month, has cornered the book market in a way that most sellers only dream of: Cult status, with massive sales. "He has built his empire solely on personal vision and taste; this is niche publishing to the extreme," says Matt Tyrnauer, a writer for Vanity Fair and the filmmaker behind "Valentino: The Last Emperor" (2008) whose interviews were included in a book on the fashion designer published by Taschen. "Benedikt makes these remarkable documents with incredible attention to quality; he is only interested in getting the most complete and extremely interesting subjects, if only for their eccentricity."

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But Mr. Taschen's books aren't all about art. His world is filled with many other subjects such as film, fashion and architecture. Sex is also one of Taschen's favorite subjects and, more often than not, what the publisher is chastised for. Books like "The Big Penis Book" (2008), which will soon be re-released in 3D, and Japanese photographer Nobuyoshi Araki's 1,000-image, bondage-and-floral epic, titled "Araki" (2002) (there's another one coming this spring) raised the ire of some in the industry. "In the media, sex is still, in a way, officially the devil. I never saw it like this; it's one of the driving forces in human nature. Surprisingly, sex is a very insignificant part of business—only about 5% of our sales, even though the media makes it seem like more," he says.

For Mr. Taschen, no risk means no excitement and no audience. He knows not every book is going to garner great sales. "We have a different way to approach things; usually we don't care about budgets. I never compromise quality, and I'm willing to take a risk. We want to have our books done right and then we look at how to finance it," he explains. It is this ideal that makes Mr. Taschen stand out. "Whether it's someone like Julius Shulman, whose career Taschen really revived in the '90s or Elmer Batters, who was the ultimate leg-fetish photographer, Benedikt is interested in getting the most complete and definitive book on the material," Mr. Tyrnauer says.