Comments on Hippolyte Bayard: Domande a Jörg Colberg

Thanks for that, Tim, and for pointing to the curr...

2008-03-22T03:16:00.000+01:00

Thanks for that, Tim, and for pointing to the current Aperture issue.

"In the US, Canada, Britain, Germany and Italy ...

2008-03-22T01:26:00.000+01:00
"In the US, Canada, Britain, Germany and Italy especially there were photographers exploring similar things along broadly similar lines."

Can you provide names? The tone of my question not flippant at all: I like your metaphor of cross pollination, and am really intrigued and fascinated by this subject.

Hi Dario

At roughly the same time (starting of with just a few practitioners in the mid 50's or so, into the 60's and 70's or just bit later), there were a number of photographers exploring similar problems in using colour as a serious medium for "art photography - as opposed to "amateur" use or commercial/studio/fashion use

New colour materials which had been developed mainly for these markets, with better emulsions, easier printing, or dye transfer with its vibrant colours and so on were some of the things that allowed for this wider exploration.

It involved in part a challenging of the status quo - that colour photography wasn't used by serious photographers.

There were also social changes going on that influenced it, as well as things happening in other areas of art - Judd's work, colour field painting, the use of bright industrial paints in fine art and so on.

And a big part of it was exploring the big and generally unexplored area of how to actually use colour in the kind of photography - how colour itself works, what you can do with it, what it changes - what is the grammar of colour if you like and so on. How does the camera see in colour.

In Canada, people like Geoff Wall (later) and Fred Herzog (earlier)(http://tinyurl.com/3ycxt2) were doing this. In Italy people like Luigi Ghirri. In the UK, Paul Graham (later), Peter Mitchell (earlier) and others.

In Sweden, there was a photogapher whose name escapes me right now And in Denmark, Keld Helmer-Petersen's

ANd of course the more widely known in the US - Shore, Eggleston etc, as well as Saul Leiter before them

Interestingly, some of these photographers were acting almost independently of each other, while many others were very much aware of some of the similar work going on.

Martin Parr recently put together an exhibition along these lines "Colour before Color" making a bit of a point that while many people seem to see the "New Color Work" coming mainly out of the US in the 70's, there was also a lot similar going on in Europe at the same time (and a couple of those early US color workers were, in their own words) very much influenced by the work of Luigi Ghirri - that cross-polination.
http://www.hastedhunt.com/exhibition.php?p=p&e=86

(and maybe a book as well?)

The current edition of Aperture picks up on it as well
http://www.aperture.org/store/magazine-detail-flash.aspx?ID=646#spreadone

In some ways, it almost parallels the invention of photography itself, where a good number of people in different parts of the world - from France to the UK to Brazil were trying to solve the same problems and exploring the same advances in technology at the same time

Stefan: I have to agree with you. It's sad, becaus...

2008-03-21T16:21:00.000+01:00
Stefan: I have to agree with you. It's sad, because just when you think that things could get a bit interesting, the dialogue is either abandoned or turned into a meaningless deaf-dialogue.

I think it has a lot to do with a degree of inabiltity in the management of our own egos.

like most of the time in the net, everybody is int...

2008-03-21T10:51:00.000+01:00
like most of the time in the net, everybody is interested in his own words...everybody wants to read what he wants to read.

Tim, your approach unfortunately leads to what I l...

2008-03-20T18:19:00.000+01:00
Tim, your approach unfortunately leads to what I like to call the "Sander problem" where every discussion of some portrait photographer inevitably has to contain a reference to Sander, regardless of how useful that is. But at least it's more useful than talking about "German photography", I give you that.

I'm just not too interested in those kinds of semi-theoretical arguments, because I feel they ultimately reduce the discussion about photography to less than what it could be. I think given the rich state of photography, our discussions should try to mimick that richness as much as possible.

"In the US, Canada, Britain, Germany and Italy esp...

2008-03-20T08:29:00.000+01:00
"In the US, Canada, Britain, Germany and Italy especially there were photographers exploring similar things along broadly similar lines."

Can you provide names? The tone of my question not flippant at all: I like your metaphor of cross pollination, and am really intrigued and fascinated by this subject.

Oh - I don't think I missed the point. But there i...

2008-03-20T06:10:00.000+01:00
Oh - I don't think I missed the point. But there is a difference between trying to fit certain photographers and artists into narrow or rigid categories; and recognising where their roots are grounded and where their influences came from.

This isn't usually speculation - and these aren't tenuous or vague connections.

The "new colour" work evolved almost simultaneously, in several places - in part very much due to technological advances and changes (along with various other factors). In the US, Canada, Britain, Germany and Italy especially there were photographers exploring similar things along broadly similar lines. And the students in Dusseldorf were very much a part of this, while others in other places weren't at all.

Photography, especially "art" photography, is still a small world and it was even smaller then.

There was direct and indirect "cross pollination" among many of those exploring this new direction - which has nothing to do with narrowly categorizing photographers - in some ways, quite the opposite.

Tim, you're missing most of my point. There might ...

2008-03-19T18:04:00.000+01:00
Tim, you're missing most of my point. There might be connections - just like the one I talked about between Sternfeld and Brohm - but it's more useful and ultimately rewarding not to stifle a debate by trying to push everything into simple categories.

""For example, if you go to McDonald’s (which I ac...

2008-03-19T16:37:00.000+01:00
""For example, if you go to McDonald’s (which I actually never do, but I know enough people who do)""

thats what we all say ;))

thank you, interesting interview.

I think your comparison shows how useless categ...

2008-03-19T02:17:00.000+01:00
I think your comparison shows how useless categorizations can become. As far as I know, there are some connections between Sternfeld and some German photographers. If you look at Joachim Brohm’s Ruhr work, that looks almost like Sternfeld (and I think someone told me they had met and worked together). It’s probably true that American photographers like Sternfeld or Stephen Shore paved the way for the acceptance of colour photography in the art world.

In the 1970's the Bechers obtained a number of Stephen Shore's early photographs and they adorned the walls at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf (I remember visiting there in 1979 and seeing them).

The Bechers have talked about the clear influence these had on their students.

From very early on there was a strong and practical link between the "new colour" work in N. America and the students in Düsseldorf