how-the-duesseldorf-school-revolutionised-photography

[michaelwj]

I used to be a hater on the Düsseldorf school. Once I saw a collection of large prints, including several by Gursky, I was converted. For me the images are like Color Field paintings, especially for example Rhein II.

I also thoroughly enjoyed Struth's exhibit at the High in Atlanta last year that x-ray mentioned. I spent hours there looking at his industrial images.

Agreed. The small scale and screen presentation don't do any of it justice. Once you see it in (very) large prints, wow. It takes on a whole different meaning.

And I like rap and country music (some of it anyway). Much the same as I like almost all types of art (some of it anyway).

 

[x-ray]

I used to be a hater on the Düsseldorf school. Once I saw a collection of large prints, including several by Gursky, I was converted. For me the images are like Color Field paintings, especially for example Rhein II.

I also thoroughly enjoyed Struth's exhibit at the High in Atlanta last year that x-ray mentioned. I spent hours there looking at his industrial images.

For those of us that work/ worked in industrial environments as photographers Struths work is very ordinary. The only difference is he routines shoots 8x10 and I routinely shot 4x5 but could have just as easily shot 8x10. Many images I personally did went into traveling displays with prints up to 20 feet in length.

Here are a couple of examples of what I shot daily.

Oh yes, the other difference is he has a good PR guy.

I pulled these out of my phone library so they're probably going to be small.

The first and second images are a neutron accelerator and the third is a pilot plant for ethanol production.

 

[x-ray]

A couple more routine industrial shots. This is why I say what he does is nothing out of the ordinary for a commercial / Industrisl photographer.

 

[michaelwj]

Oh yes, the other difference is he has a good PR guy.

This is the main difference.
The other difference is he took a big gamble, to try to be a success in the art world which spits out almost everyone and gives them nothing (which is also why art favours the wealthy). In contrast to the more secure world of commercial photography (not to diminish the risks you need to take to be a successful commercial photographer).

 

[PKR]

In the latest art auction news.. I found this interesting as to selling price:
https://twitter.com/ChristiesInc/status/930963628219666432


The "lost and found" DaVinci selling for $450M is a whole other matter. Many think it's a fake. Christies' clever wording in their PR Dept release, seems to avoid any legal issues if it turns out it is.

I've questioned gallery owners (including mine) about this stuff. The answer is always a variation on the theme: the value of a piece of art = what someone is willing to pay for it.
https://www.theguardian.com/artandd...orb-leonardo-da-vinci-salvator-mundi-painting

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...vator-mundi-leonardo-da-vinci-painting-a-fake

http://www.vulture.com/2017/11/christies-says-this-painting-is-by-leonardo-i-doubt-it.html

.

 

[x-ray]

This is the main difference.
The other difference is he took a big gamble, to try to be a success in the art world which spits out almost everyone and gives them nothing (which is also why art favours the wealthy). In contrast to the more secure world of commercial photography (not to diminish the risks you need to take to be a successful commercial photographer).

There's just as much risk if not more in becoming a success in commercial photography. There's a heck of a lot more investment in a studio and equipment plus staff. Struth has little to no overhead other than a pr person, car and Deardorff with a couple of lenses.

I had the largest studio in my area for thirty plus years. I'm semi retired but evolved into art sales in 7 fine art galleries. I sell x-ray images of florals and other objects which evolved into large commissions for corporations mainly.

There's no comparison between the two as far as risk. The risk of failure is about the same but the commercial industrial risk extends into loss of major capital.

 

[x-ray]

When I attended Struths talk in Atlanta he talked about going to the location that he planned to shoot and observing the light and flow of people. He made a big deal about this like it was unique and never done. I'm sorry, in the commercial world we call this scouting the location which many of us routinely do. It routine practice. It struck me as what a load of BS and I had to bite my lip to keep from laughing at him. The guy is completely full of himself. I will give him credit for being good at selling himself.

 

[Corran]

x-ray, if the only difference between Struth's and your images are "a good PR guy," does that diminish the work? I don't think so.

I found the images at the High to be very interesting compositionally, the subjects/sites very interesting as someone interested in cutting edge science and physics, and the amazing size impactful.

 

[michaelwj]

There's just as much risk if not more in becoming a success in commercial photography. There's a heck of a lot more investment in a studio and equipment plus staff. Struth has little to no overhead other than a pr person, car and Deardorff with a couple of lenses.

I had the largest studio in my area for thirty plus years. I'm semi retired but evolved into art sales in 7 fine art galleries. I sell x-ray images of florals and other objects which evolved into large commissions for corporations mainly.

There's no comparison between the two as far as risk. The risk of failure is about the same but the commercial industrial risk extends into loss of major capital.

The financial risk is much larger for a working commercial photographer although if the business is set up properly, that risk should be confined to losing your income, not your house. Also, I imagine that you didn't have the large studio on day one, but built it up over time therefore minimising your exposure to risk. In this sense it it just like any small business, likely to fail (I think about 5% of small businesses survive and provide an income for their owners long term).

I suppose when I say risk I mean likelihood of failure. Commercial photography is a business, and you should be able to go into it with you're eyes wide open, and if you work hard and are good at all aspects of it, you're chance of success should be high. Art photography is a different matter entirely, your success is largely defined by your PR.

 

[thompsonks]

I thought the original article was interesting and well written. I've never read another good explanation of how the Bechers influenced their students, whose work often looks so different from theirs.

I think it's a mistake to pronounce on whether or not you 'like' this sort of work. It exists not to please us or just to make money (as some of the comments imply), but to give us a different kind of visual experience and make us aware of the difference between what we expect a photograph to look like, and what we now see.

If Struh and Close make oversized portraits, they're not particularly trying to get you to like or buy 'em - they're exloring their and your experience of this sort of giantism. If Gursky photographs every detail of a supermarket or a Chinese factory and gets you to look into every square foot or even inch of it, he's exploring, and getting you-the-viewer to explore, something never seen nor photographed on such a scale. Making and seeing such images is more of a 'happening' than an emotional expression or a sales ploy.

While I don't happen to think Montparnasse is Gursky's most interesting photograph, it's a good example of this sort of photography as a large-scale mind-game. IMO you can enjoy this visual game as either artist or viewer, or you can ignore it. But the rewards aren't just Likes and $ - they're imaginative inquiries into what and how we see. And as the article explains, the Bechers' grids were an important model for that kind of photography.

Kirk

 

[farlymac]

A couple more routine industrial shots. This is why I say what he does is nothing out of the ordinary for a commercial / Industrisl photographer.

That was one of my dreams, to be an industrial photographer. I like that shot from inside the plutonium processing room.

PF

 

[Chris101]

Gursky's great. I'd recognize his style anywhere. I see little that connects the other photographers in the article though. Just where they came from. But photographically, they are very different, in content, style and theme.

 

[x-ray]

That was one of my dreams, to be an industrial photographer. I like that shot from inside the plutonium processing room.

PF

The shot you reference was in a brand new hot cell at Oak Ridge National lab. Extremely high level radioactive materials are now handled in there. The walls ar three feet thick high density concrete and the windows are many layers of lead glass with mineral oil between them. The refractive index is so high that you can see almost into the corner when looking at an extreme angle. Some of these windows create an almost fisheye effect.

The first two shots are the spallarion neutron source at ORNL and the third is an ethanol pilot plant for DuPont.

Some industrial work is extremely dangerous. I've had to cling 400 ft cooling towers and haul equipment to the top, work in areas of extremely high voltage (500,000v) where you can hear the static electricity on the power equipment cracking above your head and feeling it to being exposed to plutonium and beryllium dust. It's really interesting work but can be extremely dangerous.

The next set is Eastman Chemical, ORNL and Tennessee Valley Authority. The TVA shot of the workers was the tube menders at Cumberland steam plant. I posed them between two of the largest boilers in the world. Both boilers are twelve stories high. Conditions can be very poor for this kind of work. I had to light the scene with 15,000ws of Speedotron strobes and had one hour from arrival to completion of the shot and I'd never been at the site before.

Honestly I think Struth is scamming art critics and wealthy patrons. There's nothing special about what he does that any other industrial photographer couldn't do or hasn't done.

 

[Corran]

Honestly I think Struth is scamming art critics and wealthy patrons. There's nothing special about what he does that any other industrial photographer couldn't do or hasn't done.

That's quite a statement and I think it does a disservice to him, and you. How many times has a photographer said "well, I could have shot that!" Sure, okay, perhaps you could've taken those photos. But you didn't, and he did. And through whatever mechanisms, like PR and marketing etc., it was hanging up in the High Museum for people like me to see, who have not been inside the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor and whatever else.

As someone who is focusing on landscape, I could say the same thing about any number of landscape photographers who are having more success at marketing their images. And people have told me "well I could have shot that if I was there." And sure, maybe that's true. But they didn't. Every photographer also puts their indelible mark on their photos at a given location, and while the conversation as it relates to PR, marketing, and who "makes it" is a good one, I think these kind of "I could have done that" statements are not helpful to anyone.

 

[Dogman]

As someone who grew up listening to rhythm and blues, gospel and country music, I feel today's rap and today's country are just evolutions of a style--most of it not necessarily to my liking but with recognizable roots.

The "Dusseldorf School" is just an evolution of the "Modernism" shown by Walker Evans (and others) whose work was just an evolution of Eugene Atget's. Somewhere in there you could throw in New Topographics photographers like Lewis Baltz. It's all interesting. Whether one likes it or not is based in individual tastes.

(It's nice that we occasionally talk about photography.)

 

[x-ray]

That's quite a statement and I think it does a disservice to him, and you.
.

Let's not make this personal. We both have the same right to our opinions.

I'll take my statement one step further. My observation at the opening was many of the wealthy elderly patrons drew questionable looks as they viewed the images. It appeared in some cases, I was listening and watching, that they felt they must like the images because the director of MOMA told them they should.

 

[ptpdprinter]

...they felt they must like the images because the director of MOMA told them they should.

Often this is the crux of it.

 

[Dan]

Don't forget to credit gallery owners/auction houses/Art Critics in part for the print size and PR funding. The bigger the print, the bigger the $ for the sale, and a bigger cut for the agent. Do you think Rhine II would be worth $2+M if it was a 20x24" print? Gallery owners, Art Critics and museum curators spend a lot of time socializing.

There must be a marketing course given at the Düsseldorf School?
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/...ouisa-clement-anna-vogel-moritz-wegwerth.html

"Clement Greenberg was probably the single most influential art critic in the twentieth century. Although he is most closely associated with his support for Abstract Expressionism, and in particular Jackson Pollock, his views closely shaped the work of many other artists, including Helen Frankenthaler, Morris Louis, and Kenneth Noland. His attention to the formal properties of art - color, line, space and so forth - his rigorous approach to criticism, and his understanding of the development of modern art - although they have all been challenged - have influenced generations of critics and historians."
http://www.theartstory.org/critic-greenberg-clement.htm
x

This is a critical point, mostly ignored because it's a seamless aspect of the art world. As in politics, money is what invigorates that level of commercial work.

 

[x-ray]

Don't get me wrong, I love some industrial shots and love shooting industrial in most cases. What I'm saying Struth wasn't a pioneer in the field and certainly wasn't the first to photograph these subjects. If you were to go through the photo archive for each of these facilities you'd find multiple images of these devices done by a staff photographer or freelancer.

I worked as a photographer for the department of energy in the mid 70's. It was routine to document any new system or device through construction and after completion. The researchers called us down to document experiments that were running for reports and grant proposals. I was assigned to Oak Rridge National Lab and loaned to the Y-12 facility frequently. I and the staff on a daily basis photographed cyclotrons, linear accelerators, nuclear reactors, plasma fusion reactors and pretty much the highest tech precision devices in the world. We all had Q security clearances and much of what we shot was highly classified.

My point is Struth didn't do anything that hadn't already been done over and over. He didn't do the shots any better than the guys that made them first. He didn't even print them bigger. We often did very large prints for displays. He just had the right contacts and a good PR guy and caught the attention of someone trying to create a new star.

 

[Dan]

A couple more routine industrial shots. This is why I say what he does is nothing out of the ordinary for a commercial / Industrisl photographer.

You're entitled to it, but that's a gross under interpretation of Gursky.
Have you stood in front of any of his work?