Photography in Contemporary German Art

In post––World War II Germany, the green shoots of an “invisible college” of photographically inspired practices appear to have sprouted largely around three personalities associated with the Düsseldorf Kunstakademie: Joseph Beuys, and Bernd and Huila Becher. Or at least this is the logical conclusion to be drawn from this survey exhibition. Gary Garrels, Senior Curator of the Walker Art Center, where this show originated, has undoubtedly organized an impressive exhibition. As Garrels correctly points out in his introductory essay, “The photographic medium came to be recognized as having enormous physical and conceptual capacities that could touch on and expand the potential of other media as well.” That statement, while undeniably true, is something of a commonplace. And there is precious little, either in the succeeding catalogue entries or the museum installation itself, to oppose the myriad self-descriptions of the significance of the artists’ works. For the viewer there are few opportunities to imagine how photography as a medium of high art might be problematic, used not merely for its own image-making sake, but as a tool to foreground what has been called its “vernacular exp