PhotoRevue, Czech Republic
Dec 30 2006
Photokina and the International Photo Scene in Cologne
Vydáno dne 30. 12. 2006 (29 přečtení)
Photokina, Cologne
As early as the 1950s and 1960s, well before the emergence of the
first festival of photography in Arles, there existed a regularly
held event presenting many exhibitions of images from historical and
contemporary photography – the culture program of Photokina, the
world’s largest film and photography fair in Cologne. The fact that
since its inception Photokina did not merely present innovations in
film and photo technology but also actual photographic work was in
large part due to the recently deceased German collector and
historian of photography, L. Fritz Gruber, who for many years
organized for the fair, both directly at the main site and in
Cologne’s numerous museums and galleries, thematic as well as
artist-oriented exhibition of the foremost photographers. After he
retired, the cultural program of Photokina experienced once more a
heyday during the time when Karl Steinorth was closely involved – the
curator of a number of major exhibitions and author of many books on
the history of photography. Photokina Cologne thus regularly saw
retrospectives of Alfred Stieglitz, Alvin Langdon Coburn, Edward
Steichen, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton, William Klein, and other
famous photographers, richly sponsored by Kodak and Agfa.
Exhibition of the Institute of Creative Photography, Silesian
University in Opava (Academy meets Photokia)
The current crisis of many traditional photographic companies that
have failed to keep up with the massive advance of digital
photography, however, has resulted in a sharp drop in the sponsorship
of the cultural side of Photokina. In spite of this, in September
2006 the Photokina Visual Gallery took place already for the third
time on the premises of Hall 1 of the much-improved Cologne
exhibition area, presenting a number of attractive exhibitions.
Exhibitions were also held at other venues during the fair;
noticeable among them for instance the immense prints of the
historical photographs of Karl Hugo Schmölz, portraying the dominants
of Cologne destroyed by air raids during the Second World War, the
documentary photographs of the Dutch photographer and environmental
activist Robert Knoth showing the deadly impact of ill-deposited
radioactive waste in Russia on the local people and landscape, or the
Bildeberg agency exhibition, portraying life in contemporary Germany
with gentle irony. The main magnet of the Visual Gallery at
Photokina, however, was the new retrospective of Martin Parr, fresh
laureate of the Erich Salomon Prize, awarded on the eve of
Photokina’s opening by the German Photographic Society (DGPh). Parr
compiled his Assorted Cocktail from sections of both older and brand
new cycles, in which he with characteristic dry English humor and
subtlety showed the typical features of mass tourism, consumerism,
globalization, and herd mentality. While the garish details of
kitschy souvenirs, chubby tourists and greasy food from Mexico or
Germany were close in both motif and style to Parr’s older
photographs from England or Spain, his newer images of everyday life
in Scotland heralded a return of sorts to his spectral 1980s´
England, full of absurd confrontations and visual symbolism. Another
exhibition that drew large audiences was Patric Fouad’s Frauenzimmer
– Brothels in Germany. These technically precise large-format
photographs showed the interior of rooms inhabited by prostitutes in
various German cities. Fouad was not seeking titillating views of
places normally accessible only to paying customers, but instead
employed the symptomatic details of garish beds, artificial flowers,
stuffed animals, embroidered pillows, and lascivious framed pictures
on walls and bedside tables to create a sociological documentary of
the settings in which the oldest trade in human history is conducted
in his native country. Of an altogether different kind was the
exhibition of young Italian photographer Lorenzo Castore entitled
Paradiso, already presented in Arles as well as several other
photography festivals. His blurred color images of streets,
backyards, bars and bedrooms are far removed from the traditional
humanism of photojournalism and rather then social issues they
reflect the inner world of the artist, his subjective take on people
and the intimate moments in their lives. The other pole of
contemporary documentary presented traditionally composed
black-and-white images by Jürgen Escher (Germany) on humanitarian aid
in various ailing places on the planet, filled with poverty, hunger,
disease and violence, but also hope and longing for a better life.
Escher’s photographs cannot be denied a certain humanist appeal, but
they lack the visual qualities of Salgado, or Nachtwey.
A number of fresh ideas and technically perfect photographs, where
today it no longer matters whether they were created using
traditional or digital technology, were on display at the group
exhibitions of young artists. The exhibition of the laureates of the
Kodak Prize for young artists was outstanding; almost all the works
were technically precise, possessed of a solid concept and functional
utilization of color (not one of the prize-winning collections were
in black and white), as well as an emphasis on visually attractive
rendition of both self-reflective and social subtext. Some works were
`staged documentary’ that obliterated the boundaries between reality
and fiction. Protagonists of this tendency meticulously arranged
spectral scenes set in strange rooms in St. Petersburg and Moscow,
places with no clear function, where time seemed to be frozen (Frank
Herfort), in a nuclear power-station and its vicinity in the
Lithuanian town of Visaginas (Martin Schlüter), or in a house where
puppets represented family members doing their morning exercises,
having breakfast or having sex – and also committing suicide (Grit
Hachmeister). Among the prize-winning works were also the naturalist
detailed photographs of women during their morning beautification
sessions (Malin Schulz and Sina Preikschat), an apt documentary from
present-day Armenia (Lili Nahapetian), inventive portraits of Chinese
artists from Peking (Tobias Habermann) and other works that proved
that many young German and European photographers are moving away
from the long dominant influence of Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer,
Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, and other famous disciples of Bernd
Becher at the Staatliche Akademie in Düsseldorf, and are looking for
new themes and new styles.
This was visible also in the international context at the exhibition
of 23 university-level schools of photography, Academy Meets
Photokina, where a single school from a formerly Communist country
was selected – the Institute of Creative Photography of the Silesian
University in Opava, represented by works of Czech, Slovak and Polish
students. The winning works of the Fujifilm Euro Press Professional
Photo Award 2006 were of a rather uneven level of achievement, as
alongside works of quality some rather banal sports shots or details
of frogs and newts were also honored. Photographs by Eliot Erwitt,
Reinhart Wolf, Ernst Haas, Andreas Feininger, and other
world-renowned artists were included in the Icon exhibition – 30
photographers of the Association of Freelance Photo Designers, which
was however handicapped by the fact that their giant prints were hung
all the way up under the exhibition hall ceiling, and few people
actually looked at them. Photographs of Charles E. Fraser were a
nostalgic reminiscence of the early days of Photokina, capturing as
they did installations of exhibition at Photokina in the years
1950-1956, which from our vantage point are sometimes unintentionally
amusing.
Of the 68 exhibitions of International Photoscene held in various
galleries and other venues, among the most interesting this year were
above all the retrospective of the American pioneer of conceptual
photography and new topography, Ed Ruscha, held at the Ludwig Museum,
the extensive, but rather uneven exhibition God in Germany at the
Kunsthaus Rhenania, and the exhibition of photographs of the
fascinating dehumanized jungle of Hong Kong tenement houses by
Michael Wolf (Germany) at the Laif Agency’s exhibition room. German
inter-war photography was represented by the impromptu street shots
of Friedrich Seidenstücker and little-known reportage photographs by
Hannes M. Flach from the car races at Nürburgring. In comparison to
the dozens of outstanding exhibitions at the International Photoscene
in the 1980s and 1990s, there was little to see this year, and
moreover the selection of exhibitions in the official program struck
one as rather random. It was evident that the International
Photoscene in Cologne is not in its heyday.
Vladimír Birgus
Fotograf 8/2006
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