8
come documents of contemporary history through the act of photogra-
phy.
Shore’s pictures are contact prints from the slides of his 8 x 10 inch ca-
mera and measure 20 x 25 cm. No limit of prints in the past; today: edi-
tions of eight prints.
•
Thomas Struth
(13, 14)
*1954, well-known German photographer. Student of Gerhard Richter
1973-1976 (painting) and Becher 1976-1980 (photography). Professor
für Photography in Karlsruhe 1993-1996.
Concept
: Diversified, extensive opus on the topic of selected surroun-
dings of humans, essentially consisting of street architecture, people
indoors, museum interiors and forest scenes referred to as ”paradise
pictures“.
C-prints in formats up to a width of 2.5 m, very limited editions.
•
Jeff Wall
(15, 16)
*1946, internationally acclaimed Canadian photographer
Concept
: Wall’s often narrative contents are everyday scenes which
have been replicated from reality, in part with the help of actors. The
pictures are solitary, without being embedded in groups of works or se-
ries. The closeness to painting is sought through the presentation of his
photographic works, using large-scale light boxes. Intellectually, he is
close to Eggleston and Ruff. Reference of the content to well-known
sculptures, paintings or novels.
A broader view
It has not been until relatively recently that photography has aimed to
align with the established fine arts such as graphics, painting and sculp-
ture, and with an average share of 15 percent of all images at large art
fairs, it is by no means established in the long run yet – despite all affir-
mations. This is also due to the fact that the evaluation of art has become
more difficult in our era of minimal art and concept art: in our expecta-
tions from art, we are increasingly moving away from the iconographic
image.
Urs Stahel, who is the curator at the photography museum inWinterthur,
has answered the question of how an extraordinary photographic work is
identified as follows:
“By using this kind of quality description, we are missing a central aspect
of contemporary art. This description concentrates on the individual work
of art and only seeks to find quality in the work of art lying or hanging in
front of us. It implies the “masterpiece” and does not see that since the
1960s, the quality of an artistic intervention has significantly moved away
from the individual work and manifests itself differently: in a sequence, in
a series of works, in an attitude, in form and content, in a commentary, in
a visual statement. In this context, quality is no longer measured on the
“work of art“ in the traditional sense, no longer just on the hardware, but
also on the software, the intervention which the artist, the photographer
conducts in our mind, in the network of communications.What I am hol-
