More than Meets the Eye
Art Photography from the
Deutsche Bank Collection on Tour through Latin America
"More
than Meets the Eye" at the MARCO Museum, Monterrey
Photo:
Roberto Ortiz
With "More than Meets the
Eye", Deutsche Bank is for the first time presenting an extensive
selection of photographic works from its collection. The spectrum of the
works shown ranges from classics like Bernd and Hilla Becher to young
representatives of the German art photography scene. Friedhelm Hütte
, Director of Deutsche Bank Art, on the exhibition's concept, which will
be traveling to other important museums in Latin America following its
premiere at the MARCO Museum in
the Mexican city of Monterrey.
Exhibition
view, series by Ralf Peters on the left, works by Candida Höfer in the
background
Photo: Roberto Ortiz
The
focus of More
than Meets the Eye is on two strains that are highly typical for
German photography: the series and the large format; both are represented
in the Deutsche
Bank Collection with important works. It was only in the eighties that
technical developments in colour photography – in particular that of
mounting Cibachrome
images using the Diasec
process – made possible the creation of large format photographs, whose
massive wooden frames made them appear to emulate painting. In contrast,
photographic series were being created soon after the birth of
photography. The term "series" or "sequence" refers to a multiplicity of
images connected by a common motif or subject-matter – whereby the
individual artist decides whether the scope, sequencing and arrangement of
the images are fixed or variable.
Thomas
Struth, Nassau Street, New York/ Wall Street, 1978
Deutsche
Bank Collection
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The possibilities created by the camera for recording a
multiplicity of different motifs under identical formal and technical
conditions were used from the early days of photography to reveal the
aesthetic dimensions of natural phenomena, as in the works of Karl
Blossfeldt, and to create typologies of landscapes, as Walker
Evans, and people, as August
Sander. This tradition of collecting and ordering images is continued
today by such artists as Bernd
and Hilla Becher,
Thomas Struth, Candida
Höfer, Peter
Loewy, and Daniela Steinfeld.
The works by these photographers selected for this exhibition demonstrate
in an exemplary fashion the wide range of possibilities offered by this
principle to individual artists in developing their own motifs – from
industrial buildings to skyscraper-lined streets to zoos, computer work
stations and classrooms. And in each case, the observer discovers new
similarities, differences and cross-references that would not be revealed
by a single image presented in isolation.
Daniela
Steinfeld, from: Klassenzimmer, 1994
Deutsche
Bank Collection, © VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2006
Photography's
potential for recording the same motif in a series of multiple images has
been used to document processes since Edward
Muybridge's studies of people and animals in motion. As examples of
contemporary process documentation, the exhibition includes Gotthard
Graubner's blurred photographs of dancing Buddhist monks, the less
mystic but all the more dynamic series on Housework by Susa
Templin, and Ottmar Hörl's
Swabian Dream, which presents the rotating perspective of a camera
attached to the hubcap of a vehicle passing through a small town in Swabia.
Such
chronological processes include in the broader sense artistic performances
whose photographic documentation – for instance in the work of Joseph
Beuys and Klaus
Rinke – has added a further dimension to German photographic art. A
logical development was to plan performances a priori as raw material for
photographic series, as exemplified by the work of Jürgen
Klauke and Dieter
Appelt.
Gotthard
Graubner, Untitled (Buddhist Monastery in Buthan/Himalayas), around 1976
Deutsche
Bank Collection, © Gotthard Graubner
Those
series based on motifs – or the photographer – in motion illustrate
especially clearly the rhythmical effect that can be achieved by
sequencing and structuring individual images. They also reveal the close
affinity between the media of photography and film.
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