A Few Words On German Photography By Andreas Mller-Pohle Two traits are commonly associated with German photography, both

of which originated in the New Objectivity movement of the 1920s and 1930s. The first trait is a rational one: its inclination towards methodology and system, and the second an emotional one: its coolness and detachment. It is primarily photographers August Sander and Karl Blossfeldt who are still revered as prophets of a German photo identity, followed by Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose typological documentations of industrial structures began causing a stir in the 1970s. In their wake, the art academy where the couple taught gave birth to a unique legend of German photography, the Dsseldorf School, whose best known exponents are Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth, sometimes wryly abbreviated to Struffsky. However, this concise formula for German photography is nothing more than a pervasive invention of the art market and the result of a media strategy which would have us believe that Mercedes is not just the most representative German car, but the only German car. It is, in fact, exactly the opposite tendency that has characterized German culture and German photography since World War II: the plurality of its "schools" (Essen, Kassel or Leipzig, to mention just a few), the diversity of its styles (from visualism to documentarism to conceptualism), and its internationality and openness (regarding foreign art trends and their representatives, often as visiting professors). Following the renaissance of fine art photography in Germany in the 1970s and 80s, and its subsequent inclusion into the established art world, the medium finds itself today in a new and amenable situation. Initially infused with primarily aesthetic ambitions and programs, this approach in fine art photography seems to have been largely exhausted and is found today in multiple forms of decor and kitsch. In its stead, a new focus on content has arisen, a new awareness of subject matter and themes from the real and virtual worlds social, political, or scientific themes, often developed and presented in complex work forms. This is the first noteworthy trend of the 1990s and 2000s: from formalism to contentism, from aestheticism to a new kind of investigative documentary photography. Closely intertwined with this trend is another, one that goes back to the radical shift in photography technology: the trend from autonomy to interface. What once, in times of analog art photography, was held as one if its defining features, namely its "autoreflexivity" (Umberto Eco) and self-sufficiency, can no longer be maintained in the digital age. Photography today is instead an open module with numerous points of entry, all of which connect to the net. Furthermore, we can hardly overlook the significant momentum originating from net photography that is, photographs created specifically for distribution and reception on the Internet that will strongly affect the overall development of photography.

A third trend is connected to the first two, one worthy of both mention and aspiration: from a mainstream (photo) culture to a culture of substreams, from the narrow focus on marketed superartists to an openness for surprising, far-fetched, often more challenging concepts to which doors were once kept closed for no other reason than the defects of low marketability, and for which, in today's age of the ubiquitous net, totally new areas are becoming available. This process began long ago, but we need a more rebellious consciousness to counteract the continued rule of mainstream, bestseller culture and the impoverishment of culture as a whole that it facilitates. Today, photography is by far the most popular and lively medium in the German art scene on the art book market, where a huge indie boom has developed, in the exhibition sector, where photography is ever-present, or in education, where a complex range of private classes and workshops are available parallel to recognized degree programs at universities and academies. It is unforeseeable that another medium could challenge the role of photography in the near future. +++ Mona Breede (born in 1968) and Achim Mohn (1964) are exponents of a middle generation of German artists whose interest is in the exploration and illumination of reality using a specific methodology, but whose focus is not on the aesthetic method itself. And the areas of reality they probe aren't directly social ones like those often dealt with by the investigative documentary photographers. But the similarities end there: Breede and Mohn embody two positions in the wide landscape of contemporary German photography characterized by high individuality and originality. The following attempts to outline their most recent projects. Mona Breede's first subject is the city more specifically, the city as a framework and backdrop for the people who move within it. Whether in Berlin, Chicago, St. Petersburg or Shanghai, the scenes are similar, and indeed are carefully selected for the desired expressive vision: a preferably quiet background in front of which all kinds of standing, walking or motorized passersby go about their business. Breede's city scenes look like stills from some unknown film, abuzz with figures whose constellations are too perfect to be the product of chance. And as a matter of fact, these baffling images are high-grade aggregations, complex montages of up to 100 individual photos. Artificial constructs they may be, but if we didn't know it, we'd be tempted to believe them, because these urban microcosms are staged plausibly enough to elicit speculation, interpretation, or even entire narratives. Mona Breede utilizes analog cameras of both medium and large formats, digitizes the negatives and uses them to compose her images in delicate precision work on the computer. Sophisticated

use of lighting throughout the process beginning with the shots themselves is what lends her work the touch of magical realism that is seldom caused by the subjects themselves, but rather the result of interplay between shadow and light. She uses this same method in her most recent series, in which she leaves the bright city in search of the dark secrets of the forest. Even more so than in the city scenes, her staging comes alive here, like a dark and intimate play that might remind some of their own childhood. For Mona Breede, photography is an art where perception and narration, observation and poetry miraculously meet and melt together. Achim Mohn is an artist of ideas. He works with a wide variety of media photography, video, sound, installation and represents the kind of artist who sees no limitations whatsoever in the selection of projects, and thus constantly re-invents the means and methods for his work. Two of his most recent projects that demonstrate his especially creative approach are Laser_Graphs and RemoteWords. Laser_Graphs are photograms cameraless photos for which the artist chose a specific experimental setup: a laser beam 1 mm in diameter is aimed parallel to the surface of a largeformat slide or negative, hitting the dust that has settled on the electromagnetically charged film, or the dust floating in the air. The particles throw their own shadows which become, in the positive, pinpricks of light, or due to the intensity of the beam, haloed ball lightning. It seems impossible not to see a metaphor for cosmic dust here that has found its way out of the lab and into the macrocosm. RemoteWords also bridges great distances, but in a direct and literal sense: affixed to the roofs of exhibit spaces and other institutes are short messages, large enough to be picked up by satellite imaging and included in Google's geodata, which in turn can be viewed all over the world via Google Earth or Google Maps. Together with designer Uta Kopp, Achim Mohn has implemented this long-term project at 20 different locations around the world. The messages are tailored to each cooperating institute's nature and activity sometimes a bon mot ("What remains is the future", Zeche Lohberg, Dinslaken), sometimes a cryptic message ("!=Ctrl", Unperfekthaus, Essen) or a political statement, like "Off limits for Google" (Academy of the Arts, Berlin), a reference to the communication giant's information sovereignty that RemoteWords so aptly uses for its own purposes.

Translated from the German by Elizabeth Goerl