The giant German photography survey stimulates the means
The filmed images include a deadline and then arranged in the ranks or networks of almost every contribution to “Typologien”, a survey of German photography in the twentieth century on Prada’s Phoenva in Milan. There is no moderate twisted horizon line, and they all fall where they must – in the lower trimester of the image – or be disposed of by background or air vision.
This is not surprising; The Germans are famous for their love for the rules, which, when it comes to photography, invented themselves. But the exhibition, sponsored by Susan with Fifer from the Frankfurt Museum, Four Modri Kunst (MMK), emphasizes the beliefs on these rules and motives behind official decisions. It is a refreshing return of formation in a moment when it puts a criticism and exhibitions of photography greatly focusing on the content, and a healthy reminder that ethics and aesthetics are for a long time.
The show begins with vegetable photos of Blossfeldt, Lotte Jacobi and Hilla Becher; They continue the work of German natural scientists who saw art and science in the eighteenth century. Immediately outside the bats, we see one of the problems related to the classification: Black Beach wallpapers, not conflicting with unparalleled light on their flowers and leaves, is so dark and flat that it is clear that they were manipulated in the dark room. Its attempt in “objectivity” distinguishes the perfect images on that natural, and the perfect samples on the random chosen. Efforts to remove the human hand from images can often mean more manipulation, not less.
Amid many perfect vegetable images, the Thomas Struth image of sunflower that has just began to appear highlighting its embarrassing petals. His most beautiful, fogged, beautiful and cutting colleague by the corner. Entitled Small sunflower no ° 18 (1992), the image invites more than other flowers in the Strute row, which, with their dew drops and the use of the total lens, feels a lot like screen clips: boring in its beauty.
Andreas Gursky offers the major floral conclusion for this section with No address xviii (2015), an amazing air view of implanted flowers in great rows. The print is so large that the topic is distinguished, and it appears to be more than one image. Gursky’s photography does not make a more understanding theme, but more mysterious.
He studied Gursky and Strute, like many artists at the exhibition, with Bernd Becher at Düsseldorf Academy. (Haila, his wife, was not officially working there, but largely, many artists describe themselves as “The Bepers”.) It includes networks of water towers and buildings that were filmed from multiple angles. Each width is calculated carefully and separated evenly, and a building always at the dead center in the frame.
It is not surprising that the work of the Bakr students betrays both influence and rebellion. SYBILLE BERGMANN was intelligently used its teachers ’approach to the building’s interior, and photographing each living room in one residential complex. Each room has the same design, each image is the same lighting from the same window; What highlights amid monotony is the personal touches that make the house a house. In the sight of the BEHERS “Typologien” series, Bergmann’s pictures exuding warm humanity – nothing small for a gray network.
On the same wall, Candida Höfer takes samples like her grandparents, but they confirm their context instead of burning black. Her images of the only animals in zoos confirm isolation and vineyard that any living object may bear when descending from their habitats for human studies. Höfer includes a giraffe – a wavy neck on the horizon between painted clouds – and the sad ding Dopelganger: the entire child’s horse is shiny and sad. The artist was not enthusiastic about me before, but his context here, it was clear that its hostility to all the patterns was necessary.
It is necessary because in Germany, among all places, patterns had severe consequences. In a smaller exhibition on the upper floor, there is a major series of photos written by Augus Sander, which began filming every “type” of people in the Fimar Republic of the twentieth century, starting in 1911. Sander was interested in the examination of the examination – what the facial structure might reveal the person’s personality – which might seem in advance in the revitalization of Nazi offspring. But the Nazis banned Sander’s project, and his son Eric, who died in prison, and the formulation of his other son Gunter, who fought for the wrong side of history. For many artists, global wars will destroy any belief in rationality, but Sander clung to his belief in the neutrality of photography and the importance of documents, and continuing to photograph the wealthy and the poor, the oppressed and the oppressed.
Amid many of his images – the amazing that exudes illnesses and individuals, all of which are difficult to photograph without the help of illustrations – I found myself dealing with every corner, and I wonder if I would see Nazi, and if I got to know him when I did. First, I wondered about this art, then life, in the past and then the present.
From Sander, the exhibition managed to gently relieve us to lighter work, and even funny, first with pictures of the eighties by Christian Portterst, which shows Eastern German families full of character who demonstrate in their living rooms. Next to those large colorful pictures of the Struth of luxury families who feel more important and more, among them is the Gerhard Richter. Next is a row of the ears filmed by ISA Genzken, then exploded; Large and unlicensed head, looks positively strange. After that, a big laugh before things become dark again: Rosemary Trock, the funniest German, moves the many angle on a few dogs who sit and even smile for their camera, they must be very good children.
Another room is dedicated to work by Richter, fateful closed. From the inside, part of the famous “Atlas” series (which started in the 1960s), with a selection focused on horrific scenes of Holocaust. Richter collected these pictures and arranged them on large leaves, focusing on the huge amount of them; There is more raging offered more than one can take.
I came across the room when he was two children, they spoke the Italian, seeing these pictures for the first time. They had many questions. Linguistically, I could only follow up, but on another level, I understood.
It has made me want to say this: photography, as a technical form, is stuck at the present time, following the abundant criticism that the camera is violent by its nature and extract, burdened with the dynamics of unequal power – all correct. Group graves pictures and death camps in “Timologien” are no exception; Looking at them feels a kind of error, very uncomfortable. But I am happy that these children saw them, despite the knot in my stomach while watching it, a knot that came back while writing. I am now thinking about the pictures of Gaza and the way they show us what colonialism looks always, as many of them occurred only before the invention of photography. Was the pictures helped after that? It is difficult to know that, but it seems that metaphorical violence has nothing on the real thing.
