Andreas Gursky – Art Blart _ art and cultural memory archive

Exhibitions: ‘The Rebellious Image: Kreuzberg’s “Werkstatt für Photographie” and the Young Folkwang Scene in the 1980s’ at Museum Folkwang Essen / ‘Kreuzberg – Amerika: Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86’ at C/O Berlin, Germany

Museum Folkwang Essen exhibition dates: 9th December 2016 – 19th February 2017
C/O Berlin exhibition dates: 10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Uschi Blume
From the series Worauf wartest Du? (What are you waiting for?)
1980
Silver gelatine print
27.3 x 40.3 cm
Museum Folkwang, Essen
© Uschi Blume

It’s so good to see these essential, vital, rebellious images from Germany as a counterpoint and “additional chapter to the history of West German photography of the time beyond that of the Düsseldorf School,” ie. the New Objectivity of Bernd and Hilla Becher with their austere “images of the water towers, oil refineries and silos of the fast-disappearing industrial landscape of the Ruhr valley.”

“A special artistic approach emerged from a dialog between renowned photographers and amateurs, between conceptual approaches and documentary narrations, between technical mediation and substantive critique and altered the styles of many photographers over time thanks to its direct access to their reality.”

I love the rawness and directness of these images. They speak to me through their colour, high contrast, frontality and narrative. A conversation in art and life from people around the world.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to Museum Folkwang Essen and C/O Berlin for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. All photographs from The Rebellious Image exhibition unless it states differently underneath the photograph.

Michael Schmidt (German, 1945-2014)
Untitled, from the series Portrait
1983
© Stiftung für Fotografie und Medienkunst, Archiv Michael Schmidt

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Michael Schmidt (German, 1945-2014)
Menschenbilder Ausschnite
1983/97
© Stiftung für Fotografie und Medienkunst, Archiv Michael Schmidt

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023)
Peter Beard and friends
1976
From the series Black Tie
Gelatin silver print
35.8 x 36.4cm
© Larry Fink

Ursula Kelm (German, b. 1942)
Self portrait 4
1983
© Ursula Kelm

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Wolfgang Eilmes (German, b. 1955)
From the series Kreuzberg
1979
© Wolfgang Eilmes

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Wilmar Koenig (German, b. 1952)
Untitled, from the series Portraits, 1981-1983
© Wilmar Koenig

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Michael Schmidt (German, 1945-2014)
Müller-/Ecke Seestraße
1976-1978
from the series Berlin-Wedding
1979
© Foundation for Photography and Media Art with Archive Michael Schmidt

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Petra Wittmar (German, b. 1955)
From the series Medebach
1979-83
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy of the artist
© Petra Wittmar

Wendelin Bottländer
Untitled
1980
From the series Stadtlandschaften (City landscapes)
C-Print
24 x 30.2cm
Courtesy of the artist
© Wendelin Bottländer

Andreas Horlitz (German, 1955-2016)
Essen Frühling (Essen Spring)
1981
© Andreas Horlitz

The exhibition The Rebellious Image (December 9, 2016 – February 19, 2017) – part of the three-part collaborative project Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-1986 , held in association with C/O Berlin and Sprengel Museum Hannover – sheds light on this period of upheaval and generational change within German photography, focusing on the photography scene in Essen.

Towards the end of the 1970s, two developments took place in Essen: the first was a revolt, a search for a new path, for a ‘free’ form of artistic photography beyond the confines of photojournalism and commercial photography; the second was the institutionalisation of photography which occurred with the foundation of the Museum Folkwang’s Photographic Collection. Some 300 photographs and a range of filmic statements and documentary material help to bring this era of change and flux in the medium of photography back to life: showing the evolution of new visual languages which – in contrast to the Düsseldorf School’s aesthetics of distance ‘ placed an emphasis on colour, soft-focus blurring and fragmentation.

The show sets out from the climate of uncertainty that developed in the wake of the death of Otto Steinert in 1978, who, as a photographer, teacher and curator, had been particularly influential in Essen in the field of photojournalism. In the area of teaching, photographic design began to come to the fore, while with the founding of the Photographic Collection at Museum Folkwang under Ute Eskildsen, the institutionalisation of artistic photography began. Young students – among them, Gosbert Adler, Joachim Brohm, Uschi Blume, Andreas Horlitz and Petra Wittmar – developed a form of photography that was divorced from typical clichés and commercial utility. The impulse behind this development was provided by the Berlin-based photographer Michael Schmidt. In 1979 and 1980, he taught in Essen and fostered a close dialogue with the Berlin and American scenes.

Over seven chapters, The Rebellious Image traces the development of photography in the 1980s in Germany: the show presents the early alternative exhibitions of these young photographers and provides an insight into the formative projects of the first recipients of the Stipendium Für Zeitgenössische Deutsche Fotografie (German Contemporary Photography Award) awarded by the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung. It shows how these young photographic artists refined topographic and documentary photography through their work with colour and their deliberate adoption of the anti-aesthetics of amateur photography. The Rebellious Image reflects on the debates and themes of the exhibition Reste Des Authentischen: Deutsche Fotobilder der 80er Jahre (The Remains of Authenticity: German Photography in the 80s). The largest and most ambitious photographic exhibition of this era, it took place in 1986 at the Museum Folkwang. This exhibition brought together representatives of the Berlin Werkstatt für Photographie, graduates of the Essen School and artists from the Rhineland who were united by their postmodern conception of reality. As such, The Rebellious Image presents a different, subjective perspective, which developed parallel to the objectivising style of the Düsseldorf School and their aesthetic of the large-format images.

The exhibition brings together important and rarely exhibited groups of works by former students in Essen such as Gosbert Adler, Volker Heinze, Joachim Brohm, Uschi Blume, Andreas Horlitz and Petra Wittmar. References to the American photography of the time – such as Stephen Shore, Larry Fink, Diane Arbus, Larry Clark or William Eggleston – make the preoccupations of this young scene apparent. In addition, with works by Michael Schmidt, Christa Mayer and Wilmar Koenig, members of the Berlin Werkstatt für Photographie are also represented.”

Press release from Museum Folkwang Essen

C/O Berlin is presenting the exhibition Kreuzberg – Amerika from December 10th, 2016 to February 12th, 2017. The exhibition is part of the project about the Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-1986, in which C/O Berlin, the Museum Folkwang Essen and the Sprengel Museum Hannover are presenting the history, influences and effects of the legendary Berlin-based photographic institute and its key players in an intercity cooperation.

“We try to help students to recognise or even find their personality, where photography becomes irrelevant with regard to its commercial applicability.” ~ Michael Schmidt, 1979

Starting in the 1970s, a unique departure in photography took place in Germany. A younger generation in various initiatives quickly established a new infrastructure for a different perspective on photography and consciously defined the medium as an independent art form – to this very day. The Werkstatt für Photographie (Workshop for Photography), founded in Berlin by Michael Schmidt in 1976, is one of these innovative models and as an institution was completely unique. That’s because it offered an openly accessible cultural production and intensified adult education beyond academic hurdles and without access limitations. A special artistic approach emerged from the unconventional dialog between renowned photographers and amateurs, between technical mediation and substantive critique as well as on the basis of documentary approaches. Its special access to reality defined styles for a long time. The Werkstatt für Photographie reached the international level through exhibitions, workshops and courses and established itself as an important location for the transatlantic photographic dialog between Kreuzberg, Germany and America. A unique and pioneering achievement!

In the beginning of the Werkstatt für Photographie, a strict documentary perspective prevailed that was based on the neutral aesthetic of the work of Michael Schmidt and concentrated on the blunt representation of everyday life and reality in a radical denial of common photographic norms. He and the young photographer scene later experimented with new forms of documentary that emphasised the subjective view of the author. They discovered colour as an artistic form of expression and developed an independent, artistic authorship with largely unconventional perspectives.

The Werkstatt für Photographie offered anyone who was interested a free space to develop their artistic talents. In addition to its open, international and communicative character, it was also a successful model for self-empowerment that at the same time was characterised by paradoxes. That’s because the vocational school set in the local community developed into a lively international network of contemporary photographers. The students were not trained photographers but rather self-taught artists and as such had a freer understanding of the medium than their professional counterparts. Moreover, the majority of teachers had no educational training but were all active in the context of adult education. At that time, there were also no curators for photography in Germany but the Werkstatt für Photographie were already independently hosting exhibitions alternating between unknown and renowned photographers…

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the Werkstatt für Photographie, C/O Berlin, the Museum Folkwang Essen and the Sprengel Museum Hannover are presenting a joint exhibition project, which for the first time portrays the history, influences and effects of this institution and its key players divided between three stages. Furthermore, the three stages outline the situation of a changing medium, which focuses on independent, artistic authorship encouraged by consciousness of American photography. As such, they’re designing a lively and multi-perspective presentation of photography in the 1970s and 1980s that adds an additional chapter to the history of West German photography of the time beyond that of the Düsseldorf School.

Text from the C/O Berlin website

Photography workshop 1976-1986. The beginnings / How it began. Part 1

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the workshop for photography, C/O Berlin, the Museum Folkwang, Essen, and the Sprengel Museum Hannover are presenting a joint exhibition project that describes the career of this institution and its actors for the first time. In addition, the three stations outline the situation of a medium on the move that – encouraged by the self-confidence of American photography – relies on independent, artistic authorship. The exhibitions create a lively, multi-perspective image of photography from the 1970s and 1980s, which adds another chapter to the history of West German photography at the time, in addition to the Düsseldorf School.

Andreas Langfeld studied photography at the Folkwang University in Essen. He is a freelance photographer and filmmaker. Svenja Paulsen is a scholarship holder in the Museum Curators for Photography program of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation. Between February and October 2016, on the occasion of the exhibition cooperation between C/O Berlin, Museum Folkwang and Sprengel Museum at the workshop for photography, they conducted interviews with the photographers involved.

Photography workshop 1976-1986. The Americans. Part 2

Photography workshop 1976-1986. Essen. Part 3

Photography workshop 1976-1986. Michael Schmidt. Part 4

Photography workshop 1976-1986. Hanover. Part 5

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Düsseldorf, Terrace
1980
C-Print
43.2 x 49.4cm
© Andreas Gursky, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017
Courtesy of the artist + Sprüth Magers

Joachim Brohm (German, b. 1955)
Revierpark Nienhausen, Gelsenkirchen
Parking area Nienhausen, Gelsenkirchen
1982
From the series Ruhr, 1980-1983
C-Print
22.2 x 27.2 cm
© Joachim Brohm
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

Reining in the picture
Joachim Brohm

Born in Dülken, Brohm studied at the Gesamthochschule, Essen and was one of the few photographers who used colour photography in the late 1970s. In his series Ruhr he tries to create a new view of the Ruhr area through the occasional recording of urban space. Brohm’s approach coincides with the claim of the then current “New Topographics” to capture the social reality in the direct environment in a documentary style. In the German-speaking photo landscape here he took a leading role.

Larry Fink (American, 1941-2023)
New York Magazine Party, New York City, October 1977
1977
From the series Social Graces
1984 © Larry Fink

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939)
Whitehaven, Mississippi
1972
© William Eggleston, Courtesy Laurence Miller Gallery, New York

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th December 2016 – 12th February 2017

Gosbert Adler (German, b. 1956)
from the series Ohne Titel
1982-83
© VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2016

William Eggleston (American, b. 1939)
Memphis
1970
Dye-Transfer
33.5 x 51.5cm
© Eggleston Artistic Trust, Memphis

Wilmar Koenig (German, b. 1952)
Floating Chair
1984
From the series Die Wege (The Ways)
C-Print
162 x 126.8cm
Courtesy Berlinische Galerie, Berlin
© Wilmar Koenig

The working-class district of Kreuzberg at the end of the 1970s on the outer edge of West Berlin – and yet the lively centre of a unique transatlantic cultural exchange. In the midst of the Cold War, the newly founded Werkstatt für Photographie (Workshop for Photography) located near Checkpoint Charlie started an artistic “air lift” in the direction of the USA, a democratic field of experimentation beyond traditional education and political and institutional standards. A special artistic approach emerged from a dialog between renowned photographers and amateurs, between conceptual approaches and documentary narrations, between technical mediation and substantive critique and altered the styles of many photographers over time thanks to its direct access to their reality. The Werkstatt für Photographie reached the highest international standing with its intensive mediation work through exhibitions, workshops, lectures, image reviews, discussions and specialised courses.

In 1976, the Berlin-based photographer Michael Schmidt founded the Werkstatt für Photographie at the adult education centre in Kreuzberg. Its course orientation with a focus on a substantive examination of contemporary photography was unique and quickly lead to a profound understanding of the medium as an independent art form. When the institution was closed in 1986, it fell into obscurity.

C/O Berlin is addressing the history of the Werkstatt für Photographie in its contribution entitled Kreuzberg – Amerika (December 10, 2016 – February 12, 2017). Within the context of adult education, a unique forum for contemporary photography emerged. A special focus is placed on the exhibitions of the American photographers that were often presented in the workshop for the first time and had an enormous effect on the development of artistic photography in Germany. The exhibition combines the works of faculty, students and guests into a transatlantic dialogue.

The Museum Folkwang in Essen is exploring the reflection of the general change of those years in its own Folkwang history with its work entitled The Rebellious Image (December 9, 2016 – February 19, 2017). After the death of the influential photography teacher Otto Steinerts in 1978, a completely open and productive situation of uncertainty reigned. Essen became more and more of a bridgehead for the exchange with Berlin and a point of crystallisation for early contemporary photography in the Federal Republic. Along with Michael Schmidt, who made provocative points during his time as a lecturer at the GHS Essen, Ute Eskildsen counted among the key players at Museum Folkwang as a curator. Early photography based in Essen addressed urbanity and youth culture, discovered colour as a mode of artistic expression, asked questions following new documentarian approaches, authentic images and attitudes and contrasted the objective distance of the Düsseldorf School with a research-based and subjective view.

The Sprengel Museum Hannover complements both exhibitions with a perspective in which the focus rests on publications, institutions and exhibitions that encouraged the transatlantic exchange starting in the mid 1960s. Using outstanding examples And Suddenly this Expanse (December 11, 2016 – March 19, 2017) tells of the development of the infrastructure that laid the foundation for and accompanied the context of the documentarian approach. The photo magazine Camera also takes on an equally central role as the founding of the first German photo galleries such as Galerie Wilde in Cologne, Lichttropfen in Aachen, Galerie Nagel in Berlin and the Spectrum Photogalerie initiative in Hanover. The documenta 6 from 1977 and the photo magazines that emerged in the 1970s, particularly Camera Austria, have separate chapters devoted to them.

Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-1986
A cooperation between C/O Berlin, Museum Folkwang, Essen, and Sprengel Museum Hannover

Sprengel Museum Hannover
And Suddenly this Expanse
December 11, 2016 – March 19, 2017
www.sprengel-museum.de

C/O Berlin
Kreuzberg – Amerika
Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
December 10, 2016 – February 12, 2017
www.co-berlin.org

Text from the Museum Folkwang Essen website

Larry Clark (American, b. 1943)
Untitled
1971
From the series Tulsa
Silver gelatin print
© Larry Clark, Courtesy of the artist and Luhring Augustine, New York

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th Dezember 2016 – 12th February 2017

Camera Nr. 8, August 1970
1970
C. J. Bucher Verlag Luzern, Schweiz,
Title: John Gossage, Kodak TRI-X
Sprengel Museum Hannover

From the exhibition at Sprengel Museum Hannover And Suddenly this Expanse
December 11, 2016 – March 19, 2017

Gosbert Adler (German, b. 1956)
Untitled
1982
C-Print
38.4 x 29cm
© Gosbert Adler
© VG-Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

Volker Heinze (German, b. 1962)
Bill Eggleston
1985
C-Print
85 x 62cm
© Volker Heinze

Christa Mayer (German, b. 1945)
Untitled
1983
From the series Abwesende, Porträts aus einer psychatrischen Langzeitstation (Absentees, Portraits from a long term psychiatric ward)
Gelatin silver print
28.3 x 28.1cm
© Christa Mayer, VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2017

From the exhibition at C/O Berlin Kreuzberg – Amerika
Die Berliner Werkstatt für Photographie 1976-86
10th Dezember 2016 – 12th February 2017

Museum Folkwang
Museumsplatz 1, 45128 Essen

Opening hours:
Tue, Wed 10am – 6pm
Thur, Fri 10am – 8pm
Sat, Sun 10am – 6pm
Mon closed

Museum Folkwang website

C/O Berlin
Hardenbergstraße 22-24, 10623 Berlin

Opening hours:
Daily 11 am – 8 pm

C/O Berlin website

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Exhibition: ‘Lost Places. Sites of Photography’ at the Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg

Exhibition dates: 8th June – 23rd September 2012

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Dirt Field
2008
From the series Trona – Armpit of America
C-Print
56 x 84cm
Sammlung Halke / Courtesy KOW, Berlin
© Tobias Zielony

“Fredric Jameson wrote that in the postmodern world, the subject is not alienated but fragmented. He explained that the notion of alienation presumes a centralized, unitary self who could become lost to himself or herself. But if, as a postmodernist sees it, the self is decentred and multiple, the concept of alienation breaks down. All that is left is an anxiety of identity. The personal computer culture began with small machines that captured a post-1960s utopian vision of transparent understanding. Today, the personal computer culture’s most compelling objects give people a way to think concretely about an identity crisis. In simulation, identity can be fluid and multiple, a signifier no longer points to a thing that is signified, and understanding is less likely to proceed through analysis than by navigation through virtual space.”

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Sherry Turkle 1

As we navigate these (virtual) worlds a signifier no longer points to a thing that is signified. In other words there is a split between referent and (un)known reality = a severance of meaning and its object.

“The image has nothing to do with signification, meaning, as implied by the existence of the world, the effort of truth, the law and the brightness of the day. Not only is the image of an object not the meaning of that object and of no help in comprehending it, but it tends to withdraw it from its meaning by maintaining it in the immobility of a resemblance that it has nothing to resemble.”2

Such is the case in these photographs. In their isolation each becomes the simulacra, the restaged models that are Thomas Demand’s photographs. That they do not allow any true reference to reality means that they become the image of memory in the present space. As the press release notes, “What happens to real places if a space loses its usual significance and can be experienced on a virtual plane?”

Kenneth Gergen observes, “The current texts of the self are built upon those of preceding eras, and they in turn upon more distant forms of discourse. In the end we have no way of “getting down to the self as it is.” And thus we edge toward the more unsettling question: On what grounds can we assume that beneath the layers of accumulated understandings there is, in fact, an obdurate “self” to be located? The object of understanding has been absorbed into the world of representations.”3

So we return to the split between referent and reality, a severance of meaning and its object in representation itself. These photographs, our Self and our world are becoming artefacts of hyperreality, of unallocated (un/all/located) space in which a unitary self/world has always been “lost.”

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to the Hamburger Kunsthalle for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Beate Gütschow (German, b. 1970)
S#11
2005
Light Jet Print
180 x 232cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle
© Beate Gütschow / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Alexandra Ranner (German, b. 1967)
Schlafzimmer II (Bedroom II)
2008
Installation, Holz, Teppich, Styrodur,  Licht, Farbe
H: 240cm, B: 500cm, L: 960cm
© Alexandra Ranner, Galerie Mathias  Güntner, Hamburg / VG Bild-Kunst, 2012

Sarah Schönfeld (German, b. 1979)
Wende-Gelände 01
2006
C-Print
122 x 150cm
Privatsammlung / Courtesy Galerie  Feldbuschwiesner, Berlin
© Sarah Schönfeld

Guy Tillim (South African, b. 1962)
Apartment Building, Avenue Bagamoyo, Beira, Mozambique
2008
(aus der Serie Avenue Patrice Lumumba)
Pigmentdruck auf Papier, kaschiert auf Aluminium
91.5 x 131.5cm
Guy Tillim / Courtesy Kuckei + Kuckei, Berlin und Stevenson, Cape Town
© Guy Tillim

Jeff Wall (Canadian, b. 1946)
Insomnia
1994
Cibachrome in Leuchtkasten (Plexiglas,  Aluminium, Leuchtröhren)
174 x 214cm
Hamburger Kunsthalle
© Jeff Wall

In recent years, photography has reached a new peak in artistic media. Starting with the Düsseldorf School, with artists such as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff or Candida Höfer, a young generation of artists developed that adopted different approaches by which to present the subject-matter of “space” and “place” in an era of historic change and social crises. With the exhibition Lost Places, the Hamburger Kunsthalle art museum dedicates itself to these new approaches, which document a wide range of different places and living spaces and their increasing isolation through the media of photography, film and installation works.

Joel Sternfeld’s documentary photographs depict places that were crime scenes. Thomas Demand restages real crime scenes, initially as models in order to then photograph them. In turn, in her large-scale photographs, Beate Gütschow constructs cityscapes and landscapes that are reminiscent of well-known places, but that do not allow any true reference. Sarah Schönfeld illustrates “the image of memory in the present space” in her photographs. She visits old places from her GDR childhood and captures these in their present state, whereby both points in time collide. In his fictional video installation Nostalgia, Omer Fast recounts the story of illegal immigrants from three different perspectives.

In his book The collective memory, French philosopher Maurice Halbwachs pointed out the significance of “spatial images” for the memory of social communities. Today the reliable spatial contextualisation of objects and memories (also due to digital photography) is under threat, hence this pretence begins to crumble. What happens to real places if a space loses its usual significance and can be experienced on a virtual plane?

The exhibition comprises about 20 different approaches of contemporary photography and video art with many loans from museums and private collections. The exhibition features the following artists: Thomas Demand (b. 1964), Omer Fast (b. 1972), Beate Gütschow (b. 1970), Andreas Gursky (b. 1955), Candida Höfer (b. 1944), Sabine Hornig (b. 1964), Jan Köchermann (b. 1967), Barbara Probst (b. 1964), Alexandra Ranner (b. 1967), Ben Rivers (b. 1972), Thomas Ruff (b. 1958), Gregor Schneider (b. 1969), Sarah Schönfeld (b. 1979), Joel Sternfeld (b. 1944), Thomas Struth (b. 1954), Guy Tillim (b. 1962), Jörn Vanhöfen (b. 1961), Jeff Wall (b. 1946) and Tobias Zielony (b. 1973).

Press release from the Hamburger Kunsthalle website

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Times Square, New York
2000
C-Print
140.2 x 176.2cm
Courtesy Thomas Struth, Berlin
© Thomas Struth

Jörn Vanhöfen (German, b. 1961)
Asok #797
2010
C-Print auf Aluminium
122 x 147cm
© Jörn Vanhöfen, courtesy: Kuckei + Kuckei,  Berlin

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Haltestelle
2009
C-Print / Diasec
240 x 330cm
Thomas Demand, Berlin
© Thomas Demand / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Thomas Demand (German, b. 1964)
Parlament
2009
C-Print / Diasec
180 x 223cm
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Nationalgalerie 2010  erworben durch die Stiftung des Vereins der  Freunde der Nationalgalerie für zeitgenössische Kunst
© Thomas Demand / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2012

Tobias Zielony (German, b. 1973)
Vela Azzurra
2010
From the series Vele
C-Print
150 x 120cm
Tobias Zielony / Courtesy und KOW, Berlin und Lia Rumma, Neapel
© Tobias Zielony

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Sáo Paulo Sé
2002
C-Print, Plexiglas
286 x 206cm
Dauerleihgabe der Stiftung für die  Hamburger Kunstsammlungen
© SHK/Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk/  VG Bild-Kunst, 2012

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Ohne Titel XIII (Mexico)
2002
Photographie
276 x 206cm
Dauerleihgabe der Stiftung für die  Hamburger Kunstsammlungen
© SHK/Hamburger Kunsthalle/bpk/ VG  Bild-Kunst, 2012

Hamburger Kunsthalle
Glockengießerwall 20095
Hamburg
Phone: +49 (0) 40 – 428 131 200

Opening hours:
Tuesdays to Sundays 10am – 6pm
Closed Mondays

Hamburger Kunsthalle website

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Exhibition: ‘Dialogue among Giants: Carleton Watkins and the Rise of Photography in California’ at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 14th October 2008 – 1st March 2009

Unknown maker, American, Attributed to Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
The Plaza, Lima, Peru
About 1852
Daguerreotype
Plate: 10.8 × 14cm (4 1/4 × 5 1/2 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

Watkins could have made this study of the Lima Cathedral on his return to California from New York via South America in 1852.

Carleton Watkins was a master photographer, craftsman, technician and, above all, a refined artist. The structural cadences of his compositions, like the best music, are superb. Within his photographs he creates a visual dialogue that sustains pertinent inquiry by the viewer – the look! see! – that has lasted centuries, as all great art does. Today his photographs are as clearly seen, as incisive of mind, as when they were first produced. They delight.

From the documentary photographs of mining settlements to the images of Yosemite; from the stereographs of cities to the gardens of the rich and famous; from the photographs of untouched interior America to the images of the Monterey Peninsula Watkins photographs are sharply observed renditions of a reality placed before the lens of his giant plate camera.

Like all great artists his eye is unique. His use angle, height and placement of the camera is reinforced by his understanding of the balance of light and shade, the construction of planes within the image and the spatial relationships that could be achieved within the frame (at the same time we note that the artist Cezanne was also investigating the deconstruction of traditional landscape perspectives within the image frame). His work reminds me of the photographs of the great French photographer Eugene Atget: both men understood how best to place the camera to achieve the outcome they wanted so that the photographs became imprinted with their signature, images that nobody else could have taken. Today we recognise both men as masters of photography for this very fact. The images they took raise them above the rank and file photographer because of the care and understanding they took in the decisions they made in the exposure of the negative.

As a precursor to modernism in photography Watkins does not have peer at this time. His photographs preempt the 20th century modernist work of Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz, his Monterey and Yosemite photographs the work of Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, and in his Japanese influences the work of Minor White. Even today at the exhibition by Andreas Gursky at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne there is a colour work of a body of water (see below: Rhein 1996) that closely reflects the structure of Watkins View on the Calloway Canal, near Poso Creek, Kern County 1887, even though the subject matter of Gursky’s image is a simulacra of an implied reality, whereas Watkins work “served as evidence in a water rights lawsuit that eventually resulted in a decisive court ruling that prevented newcomers from diverting water from existing landowners.”1

Watkins cadence as a sentient being will endure in the choices he made in the photographs he exposed. His tempo, his innate ability to place the camera, his understanding of the light and shade, texture, environment, depth of field and feeling make this artist one that all aspiring artists – no, all human beings – should study.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

For more information about this image please see the J. Paul Getty Museum web page.

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Many thankx to the J. Paul Getty Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916) (attributed)
Placer Mining Scene
c. 1852-1855
Half-plate daguerreotype
4 x 5 in. (10.2 x 12.7cm)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

Watkins was persistently interested in the technical details of mining operations. Here a primitive Spanish ore mill is used to pulverise gold-bearing rock. Throughout his career Watkins earned income producing photographs that were used as sources for engraved illustrations, as this one was.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Unknown maker, American, Attributed to Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
Engineering Camp, Copiapo, Chile
About 1852-1855
Daguerreotype
Plate: 10.8 × 14cm (4 1/4 × 5 1/2 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

In 1852 Watkins went to New York, then returned to California the following spring aboard the SS Michael Angelo, which was loaded with tons of supplies destined for mining camps on the Pacific Coast of the Americas. The vessel proceeded to the port of Caldera, Chile, where goods destined for the mines at Copiapó were unloaded. Miners and their various forms of shelter, such as the tent shown here in the landscape, were among Watkins’s favourite subjects.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916), Robert H. Vance (American, 1825-1876)
Street Scene in La Rancheria, California
1853-1855
Daguerreotype, hand-coloured
8.3 × 11.4cm (3 1/4 × 4 1/2 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

The mining camp of La Rancherie was located near the fabled Sutter’s Mill in California, where gold was discovered in 1849. In the volatile gold-rush environment of prospectors, get-rich-quick dreams, and fly-by-night towns, an assembly of men in the foreground stood for the camera to immortalise their roles in the historical moment. La Rancherie stood out for its stability: it could boast a few buildings made of clapboard and some that were even painted. The illustrated hotel sign at upper left indicates a clientele that was not entirely literate and might rely on pictures to identify potential lodgings.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
[Section Grizzly Giant, Mariposa Grove]
1861
Albumen silver print
43.2 × 52.1cm (17 × 20 1/2 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

Galen Clark, the figure in this photograph, was designated as the guardian of the Mariposa Grove of giant sequoia about the time Abraham Lincoln ceded it to California in 1864. When this picture was made, Clark lived in a cabin (not pictured) nearby and maintained a rustic way station for visitors traveling to Yosemite Valley via the Mariposa Trail, which was developed in 1859.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
Yosemite Valley from the Best General View No.2
1866
Albumen silver print
41 x 52.2cm (16 1/8 x 20 9/16 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

Carleton Watkins had the ability to photograph a subject from the viewpoint that allowed the most information to be revealed about its contents. In this image, he captured what he considered the best features of Yosemite Valley: Bridalveil Falls, Cathedral Rock, Half Dome, and El Capitan. By positioning the camera so that the base of the slender tree appears to grow from the bottom edge of the picture, Watkins composed the photograph so that the canyon rim and the open space beyond it seem to intersect. Although he sacrificed the top of the tree, he was able to place the miniaturised Yosemite Falls at the visual centre of the picture. To alleviate the monotony of an empty sky, he added the clouds from a second negative. This image was taken while Watkins was working for the California Geological Survey. His two thousand pounds of equipment for the expedition, which included enough glass for over a hundred negatives, required a train of six mules.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
Further Up the Valley. The Three Brothers, the highest, 3,830 ft.
1866
Albumen silver print
39.2 × 53.5cm (15 7/16 × 21 1/16 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

In 1850, at the age of 20, Carleton Watkins is believed to have arrived in California from New York via South America. He embarked on a life in photography that began auspiciously during the gold rush (which started in 1849) and ended abruptly with the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire that destroyed his negatives. In between those historic moments, Watkins witnessed an era in which a recurring theme was the enormity of all things in the West. He photographed the expansive western landscape with its miles of coastline, vast natural resources, colossal trees, and the monoliths of the Yosemite Valley using an oversize mammoth-plate camera.

In the 1860s Watkins’s Yosemite photographs brought him fame from as far away as Paris, but a decade later he experienced a painful financial reversal. In the end, he died a pauper in 1916 after a life that brought him into dialogue with the many “giants” of his era. The photographs he left behind provide a unique personal vision of the birth and growth of California.

Mining Scenes and Daguerreotypes

After arriving in Sacramento in 1850, Watkins worked delivering supplies to the mines during the gold rush. As he traveled throughout the region, he applied his new photography skills by making daguerreotypes (an early photographic technique using silver-coated, polished copper plates). In 1852, he is believed to have taken up photography full time, making daguerreotypes as a freelance “outdoor man” for established studios in Sacramento, Marysville, and San Francisco.

Among the most important photographs created in California before about 1855 are more than 100 daguerreotypes of buildings and landscapes, the majority of which have not been attributed. Many represent the San Francisco Bay Area and the mother lode regions northeast of Sacramento, where Watkins lived from 1850 to 1853 – a fact that geographically positions him in the right place at the right time to have been their maker. This exhibition compares select daguerreotypes by unknown makers with securely identified photographs by Watkins. On the basis of style and other circumstantial evidence, it is possible that Watkins may have made many of the daguerreotypes.

Yosemite

Watkins first visited Yosemite Valley in the late 1850s and then returned to Yosemite several times in the 1860s and 1870s with a new mammoth-plate camera designed to expose collodion-on-glass negatives that were 18-by-22 inches in size. With this equipment, he created the pictures that soon brought him international fame.

Watkins was not the only photographer who made images of Yosemite. Charles L. Weed and Eadweard Muybridge both followed Watkins into Yosemite, and the photographers often re-created one another’s views. This exhibition explores the visual dialogue in Yosemite between Watkins, Weed, Muybridge, and the unidentified camera operator for Thomas Houseworth and Company, who may have actually been Watkins.

Pacific Coast

Watkins was best known for his photographs of Yosemite, but he also took his camera to the silver mines of Nevada and Arizona, and up and down the Pacific coast. Throughout his career he applied his understanding of the elements of landscape as art. His early work with mining subjects proved to be excellent training for his eventual vision of landscape as a powerful counterbalance to the fragility of human existence. He harnessed the elements of visual form – line, shape, mass, outline, perspective, viewpoint, and light – to enliven often static motifs in nature.

Watkins photographed the Monterey Peninsula in the 1880s, recording the scenery in a continuously unfolding progression along Seventeen-Mile Drive, which began and ended at the Hotel Del Monte. Near the hotel, Watkins created this image of a native cypress – windblown and with its roots exposed – clinging to the side of a rocky cliff. Many distinguished photographers, among them Edward Weston and Ansel Adams, followed Watkins over the years along this same stretch of coast, photographing similar subjects.

Anonymous. “Dialogue among Giants: Carleton Watkins and the Rise of Photography in California,” on the J. Paul Getty Museum website 2008 [Online] Cited 09/06/2022

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
Cape Horn, Columbia River, Oregon
Negative 1867; print about 1881-1883
Albumen silver print
40.5 × 52.3cm (15 15/16 × 20 9/16 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

In 1867 Carleton Watkins made an expedition to Oregon to obtain photographs of its geology, including the chain of extinct volcanic mountains that cap the coastal range. This view was made from the Washington side of the Columbia River. Even the evidence of a solitary boatman and his cargo does not disturb the landscape’s profound serenity, nor does his presence reveal the fact that cultivated farmland and an apple orchard existed nearby. Watkins’s image nonetheless portrays a man facing nature at its most grand and overwhelming. The man’s boat appears ready to launch into the still, glassy river, an act that will make an indelible imprint on the water’s pristine, boundless surface.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
[Sugarloaf Islands at Fisherman’s Bay, Farallon Islands]
About 1869
Albumen silver print
41 × 54.3cm (16 1/8 × 21 3/8 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

Craggy rocks rise from a swirling, misty sea. Two seagulls punctuate the foreground, giving the scene a sense of scale. The uninhabited Sugarloaf Islands, part of the Farallon Island group, are located just north of San Francisco in the Pacific Ocean; in this photograph, they loom in the surf offshore like mysterious, petrified sea creatures. The length of the exposure softened the waves’ swirl into mist, adding to the impression of ancient, craggy mountaintops breaking through vaporous clouds.

Carleton Watkins frequently photographed the Farallon Islands. This particular area, the Gulf of the Farallones National Marine Sanctuary, includes 1,235 square miles of nearshore and offshore waters ranging from wetlands to deep-sea communities.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
View on Lake Tahoe
1877
Albumen silver print
40.3 × 52.7cm (15 7/8 × 20 3/4 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

Standing between two sets of rails, Carleton Watkins photographed a busy pair of tracks above Carson Valley, Nevada. His shadow and that of his mammoth-plate camera indicate his precarious position on the steep grade in the foreground. A single engineer stands near the empty track curving around a mountain on the left, having already observed the train that heads away from the trestle on the right. Beneath these tracks, another steam engine pulling lumber on multiple flatbed cars makes its way around a sharp curve. The wood carried by these trains was an essential material for building the railroad and for operating steam engines. Lumber served as ties beneath the iron rails, telegraph poles lining the route, and fuel for wood-burning steam engines.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
Agassiz Rock and the Yosemite Falls, from Union Point
about 1878
Albumen silver print
54.4 × 39.2cm (21 7/16 × 15 7/16 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
[Thompson’s Seedless Grapes]
1880
Albumen silver print
37.6 × 55.7cm (14 13/16 × 21 15/16 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

In this image celebrating Kern County’s agricultural bounty, Carleton Watkins clearly defined each fresh grape, tooth-edged leaf, and woody twig. Real estate developers successfully used photographs of lush fields, ripe produce, and plentiful harvests as a means of advertising to boost Southern California’s economy. The grape bunches hanging from the tendrils of this vine represent the earliest cultivation of seedless grapes.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
The Dalles, Extremes of High & Low Water, 92 ft
1883
Albumen silver print
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

At twenty, Carleton Watkins headed out to California to make his fortune. After working as a daguerreotype operator in San Jose, he established his own practice and soon made his first visit to the Yosemite Valley. There he made thirty mammoth plate and one hundred stereograph views that were among the first photographs of Yosemite seen in the East. Partly on the strength of Watkins’s photographs, President Abraham Lincoln signed the 1864 bill that declared the valley inviolable, thus paving the way for the National Parks system.

In 1865 Watkins became official photographer for the California State Geological Survey. He opened his own Yosemite Art Gallery in San Francisco two years later. The walls were lined with 18 x 22-inch prints in black walnut frames with gilt-edged mats. Such elegant presentation did not come cheap, and Watkins was accused of charging exorbitant prices. A poor businessman, he declared bankruptcy in 1874 and his negatives and gallery were sold to photographer Isaiah Taber, who began to publish Watkins’s images under his own name. Watkins, however, continued to photograph, and seven years later became manager of the Yosemite Art Gallery, then under different ownership. The San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 destroyed the contents of his studio, which he had intended to preserve at Stanford University.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Saint Cloud
1904
Albumen silver print

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
Cypress Tree at Point Lobos, Monterey County
1883-1885
Albumen silver print
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

Carleton Watkins (American, 1829-1916)
View on the Calloway Canal, near Poso Creek, Kern County
1887
Albumen silver print
37.5 x 53cm (14 3/4 x 20 7/8 in.)
J. Paul Getty Museum Collection

The first photographs Watkins made along the Kern River served as evidence in a water rights lawsuit that eventually resulted in a decisive court ruling that prevented newcomers from diverting water from existing landowners. James Ben Ali Haggin, the defendant and Watkins’s client, had a series of irrigation canals that raised the price of land in Kern County. In this spare composition, made where present-day Poso Road crosses the Calloway Canal, Watkins devoted almost equal proportions to sky, land, and water.

Text from the J. Paul Getty Museum website

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Rhein II
1996

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Opening: ‘Andreas Gursky’ at the National Gallery of Victoria International, Melbourne

Exhibition dates: 21st November 2008 – 22nd February 2009

Opening: Thursday 21st November 2008

Andreas Gursky banner at NGV International exhibition, Melbourne

A large but plain crowd assembled for the opening of the first exhibition by world renowned German photographer Andreas Gursky at the National Gallery of Victoria in St Kilda Road, Melbourne. After some lively conversation with friends and following the opening speeches we wandered into a large clean gallery space with minimal design elements. The use of space within the gallery allowed the work to speak for itself. It is a minimal hang and the exhibition works all the better for this.

As for the work itself 21 large photographs are presented ranging from landscapes to buildings, race tracks to formula 1 pits, Madonna concerts to the Tour de France. Most work successfully in building a hyperreal vision of the world. We are not sure what is ‘real’ or hyperreal, what is a straight photograph or what has been digitally manipulated and woven together. The colour and sharpness of the images is often intensified: in reproductions of the famous photograph of the 99c supermarket in America the colours seem flat but ‘in the flesh’ the colours are almost fluoro in their saturation and brightness.

Having said that the photographs are nearly always unemotional – as though seen from above in the third person, they observe with detachment. The intrigue for the viewer is in the detail, in working out what is going on, but these are not passionate photographs on the surface. It is beneath the surface that the photographs have their psychological effect: the best of the images work on the subconscious of the viewer. Like a fantastical dance the three very wide images of the Formula 1 pits feature pit crews practicing tyre changes, frozen in a choreographed ballet. People in the galleries above stare down; pit lane girls seem to have been inserted digitally into the images, standing at side or behind the pit crews in a seemingly surreal comment on these worlds. These are theatrical tableaux vivant, splashed with teams colours. Fantastic photographs.

In some of the images, such as the Madonna concert or the photograph of the Bahrain Formula 1 racetrack, space seems to have folded in on itself and the viewer is unsure of the structure of the image and of their vantage point in looking at them. Space also collapses in the photograph of the pyramid of Cheops (2006, below), where the depth of field from foreground to background of the image is negligible. Less successful are images of a Jackson Pollock painting and a green grass bank with running river (Rhein II 1996, below), intensified beyond belief so that the river seems almost to be made of liquid silver.

A wonderful exhibition in many aspects, well worth a visit to see one the worlds best photographers at work. The photographs tell detached but psychologically emotional stories about what human beings are doing to the world in which they live. These images are a commentary on the state of this relationship – images of repetition, pattern, construction, use, abuse and fantasy woven into hyperreal visions of an unnatural world.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to the National Gallery of Victoria for inviting me to the opening and for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

For the first time in Australia, an exhibition by German contemporary photographer Andreas Gursky opened at the National Gallery of Victoria. From the Haus der Kunst in Munich, Andreas Gursky presents 21 major works for which the artist is internationally acclaimed. The photographs range from 1989 to 2007 and include seminal works such as Tokyo Stock Exchange and the diptych 99 cent store. Andreas Gursky is recognised as one of the world’s leading contemporary artists. On view through 22 February, 2009.

Well known for his large-scale (generally measuring an astounding four to five metres) and extraordinarily detailed photographs of contemporary life, Gursky continues the lineage of ‘new objectivity’ in German photography which was brought to contemporary attention by Bernd and Hilla Becher.

In the 1990s, Gursky became inspired by the various manifestations of global capitalism. His interest was piqued looking at a newspaper photograph of the crowded floor of the Tokyo Stock Exchange and he began to photograph its flurry of suited traders, somehow moving according to some inbuilt order.

Dr Gerard Vaughan, Director, NGV said the Andreas Gursky exhibition represented a significant coup for Melbourne: “The National Gallery of Victoria is the only Australian venue for this extraordinary show – the first major exhibition of Gursky’s work ever to be seen in this country. Generously organised by the Haus der Kunst Museum in Munich we are extremely fortunate to have had the works in this show selected for us by Andreas Gursky himself.”

Andreas Gursky was born in 1955 and grew up in Düsseldorf, Germany. In the early 1980s, he studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany’s State Art Academy. Whilst there he was heavily influenced by his teachers Bernd and Hilla Becher, who were well known for their methodical black and white photographs of industrial machinery.

In 1984 Gursky began to move away from the Becher style, choosing instead to work in colour. Since then he has travelled across the world to cities such as Tokyo, Cairo, Hong Kong, Stockholm, Singapore and Los Angeles photographing factories, hotels and office buildings – places he considered to be symbols of contemporary culture. His world-view photographs during this period are considered amongst the most original achievements in contemporary photography.

Gursky has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions including the Internationale Foto-Triennale in Esslingen, Germany in 1989 and 1995, the Venice Biennale in 1990, and the Biennale of Sydney in 1996 and 2000. In 2001, Gursky was the subject of an exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

Press release from the National Gallery of Victoria website