SALON AKADEMIA GALLERY
„Dojczland…z poważaniem”
„Sentimentality and Feeling”
Text by: Sebastian Arthur Hau
Laura Bielau, Daniel Schumann, Adam Etmanski, Verena Loewenhaupt, Kim Keibel,
Douglas Huebler, Sandra Stein, Michael Schmidt, Mariusz Kozikowski, Oliver Sieber, Aymeric Fouquez, Jörg Koopmann, Lin Lambert, Jan Lemitz.
The concept of sentimentality is today most certainly outdated. In general culture less so, but in high culture this has certainly been the case for more than 150 years. The exhibition of the same title, however, showing mostly the work of young photographers, will neither try to prove that sentimentality will become more current or prevalent nor underline the timelessness of photography. One can assume that, today, sentimentality does not play a significant role in art and artistic photography. And let’s be grateful for this, given the apparent risks of sentimenality. All the same „sentimentality” was chosen as title and theme to this exhibition, which wants to show photographic tendencies in Germany, from very different authors and practices.
Among the participants there are one world renowned photographer, more famous abroad than in Germany, living in Berlin. And a young female photographer, who works for an advertising agency and documents her life using a mobile phone. A photographer from the Ruhr, who today lives in Seoul and has opened his own gallery there. A photographer from Munich who has achieved an important position thanks to commissions and advertising. A female photographer from Leipzig who photographed strippers in her „darkroom”. An engineer and mechanic who photographs accidents and peculiarities. Two of the photographers were born in Poland, one in France and all three are living in Cologne. To get a better overview on these positions, one should first take an express journey through the landscape of German photography.
A rich media scene appeared after the war in Germany, with a plethora of newspapers and magazines, strongly supported by the occupying powers, who did their best helping to create an independent system of media. Art academies and higher technical schools were once again set up in many larger cities. Although photography’s role in learning only commenced in the sixties, another important factor from the fifties onwards were the "Photokino" fairs, a meeting place for companies that produced photographical material or cameras and representatives of various spheres linked with photography, amateurs, professionals, journalists, independents and artistic photographers. Concerning art photography it has to be noted that it was not until much later, in the seventies, that the first independent photographic galleries were set up. However most of them were and are geared toward the art market rather than toward the practice of photography. On the other hand, the art market later became the motor for the development of artistic photography. The parallel development, in Eastern Germany, has not so far been thoroughly researched. The first books and exhibitions are divided into interests in authorial photography and fashion. Above all others, the University in Leipzig, where Arno Fischer lectured for a long time before moving to Dortmund photography school, offered its students a relatively free system of learning, which covered artistic experiments and the documentation of everyday life. Today higher technical schools and academies, through symposiums, publications and lectures, try to excite a public interest in the creations of their students quite early on. Here I am thinking of Leipzig, Dusseldorf, Munich, Bielefeld, Bremen...
With such a quick look into the landscape of German photography, a large spectrum of possibilities and a variation of ideas catches the eye. It becomes obvious however that what is missing are the great essays, which treat the problem of present-day Germany. Today these issues are often spoken about in film, literature and popular music, to sometimes excessively large quantities. Photography takes more of a back seat with regard to these issues. The road outlined by: Rene Burris' "Germany," Arno Fisher's works on Berlin or Michael Schmidt's "Waffenruhe" and "Ein-heit" has not been taken up. Film director Wim Wenders, who throughout his life chose to contend with the consequences of Americanization, said in the eighties - when discussion about the homeland in cinema started stagnating - that the negative consequences of the Nazi period, thus the widely spread distrust of images created by their instrumental treatment by the minesterium of propanda, most of all blocked the visual artists. This distrust is sometimes felt in the context of photography when it is being discussed and divided into artistic and documentary style, subjective and objective. Critics are only left with the term 'surreal,' when they review photographs which do not fit into these frames.
Artists and critics from West Germany refuted sentimentality, but this occurred only recently (one could say that it was from the period of industrialization). Whereas in our world, fuelled with consumption, feelings and emotions are continuously aroused and directed, so called kitsch is tolerated everywhere, sentimentality (linked in lexicons with: being moved or manipulated, musical hits, trivial literature, elation) is a curse. It is rejected by people who want to feel that they are part of high culture. As for me, I had to take the round about way, through Asian cinema, Japanese and Korean musical hits, which in a strange way reminded me of French hits. Then from French music to Italian. Goethe and also Schiller gave themselves up to writings on sentimentality. The former, in his essay on Laurence Stern's "Sentimental Journey," underlines that it is necessary to excite a balance of feelings in the reader.To Goethe, a close study of the seemingly light text revealed layers of heterogenous strands of writing, and only a very elegant and daring mix of these elements would produce the apparingly simply effect of sentimentality. Unlike in the past, today I believe that there is something more which is hiding behind sentimentality..
Photographers from the class of the Bechers are, through their success, shaping the way in which German photography is viewed. Their sober strategies, which operate against romanticism but are also inspired by it, are seen as not being passionate. This is certainly not true in every case, but this understanding is now also influencing todays new generations in photography. A style in photography, which searched images that could be at the same time „straight” and function as windows into the „soul”, e.g. attempts by Volker Heinze and Gosbert Adler from the nineties, is a rarity these days. Today beside journalistic tendencies, where that which is anecdotal is mixed with that which is youthful and which often deals with home and family orientated themes, we see photography which is chiefly geared toward feelings and which is related to fashion, advertising and consumption.
Photographers who are very different from one another and have different opinions are be set against eachother as much as placed together in this exhibition. Trough this, authors who are concerned with photographing emotions, affects and feelings, who want to move the observer, will be displayed. Words will fail trying to say what photography can, and all generalizations are dead ends. My only hope is that everything will become clear at the exhibition. The aim is to set in motion an interplay between visitors, photographers and those having been photographed, the portrayees.. The photographs chosen for the exhibition show only parts of processes and activities. It is here that photographs should pass on something about life and co-living in Germany. Still, these photographs do not want to be representations. They depict simple activities: dancing, eating, gestures, driving a car. Everyday goings on, which always posed a challenge for documentary photography, or for photography which feels that it is obliged to have a documentary style.
A film director who challenged the issue of longing 'head on' is French film maker Robert Bresson. He continously uses a single means. He presents fragments of processes: battle, flight, love. He uses cuts and cuttings so that due to our longing we as the audience will want to feel the whole and start imagining it. To come to terms with American culture, German photographers in the eighties, started using small parts of it, perhaps inspired by the American short stories. This exhibition also brings together parts, cuttings and fragments. It is a search for balance and presents a view of something which I have long rejected even more than sentimentality itself: the homeland.
Show curator, Sebastian Arthur Hau, would like to thank Eberhard Kemmer
and Ivon Cervino Sancha for their insight, commitment and support.