Currently at SF's MoMA - doubt, I'll be able to make it, there, unfortunately. Here's a nice little selection from some site (found that on the fabulous esthet.org)
PS: I noted that German photography seems to be en vogue in the US these days. Anyone?! I'm German! Eh, never mind.
Thomas Ruff is teaching at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, and you can look at his students' portfolios here. And there are more examples from Ruff's "Nudes" series" here and here (note: the latter link sometimes is a bit flaky).
PS: It's quite interesting that the word "objectivity" isn't a completely exact translation of the German word "Sachlichkeit". Maybe I'm too anal about it (you might think) but in being that I am actually following that kind of concept to a certain extent. Of course, I can't come up with a better translation. Maybe you can understand it like this: When you meet a German you'll note that they are almost a tad too deadpan about things. I've noticed that non-Germans think Germans simply have no sense of humour but that's just a simplifying misconception. I remember I once made a somewhat absurd joke in front of my advisor in grad school - a Brit - and he thought I was being serious. He just couldn't imagine a German would say something like that, with a deadpan expression, and joke at the same time.
There's a lot of Sachlichkeit in many Germans. You state things the way they are and that's it. Of course, it's somewhat absurd if a German tries to explain something like that - how could you ever make sense talking about yourself? - but maybe you got an idea of what this is all about.
Yet more contemporary German photography: Thomas Kellner's "Deconstructions" (via esthet.org). His own website contains more photos and information about the photographer. Unfortunately, the sample photos are all very small.
fotoetage.de is a photo agency from Bremen, a town in the north of Germany. Apart from the snazy presentation they got a bunch of cool photographers (check out Nikolai Wolff!)
At the Liverpool Tate Gallery, there's a big Thomas Ruff retrospective. The Tate's magazine features an article about his work which includes a collection of various images. There also is what they call a Thomas Ruff Montage Maker - which I didn't look at myself (for technical reasons - it's designed for Microsoft's "Internet Explorer" which I refuse to use).
"Thomas Ruff thinks his banal, borrowed, grainy images have a place in art history. Think again." writes Peter Conrad in The Observer, referring to the Tate exhibit mentioned here yesterday.
(thru the invaluable thingsmagazine.net)
Look at that. Jens Bennewitz' photography looks like my Lomo stuff. (Oh, if you fail to get the navigation there [like me] just click on those symbols at the bottom. I don't know what they mean but it'll get you to the photos.)
Boris Becker another Becher pupil (who is not identical with the tennis player), has his own website.
The new edition of Leica World features lots of interesting photographers. Finding their work online has been tough, though. I started looking for Herlinde Koelbl and, in the end, all I could really find was not the work I originally was interested in but instead a project called "Spuren der Macht" ("Traces of Power"). For the project, Herlinde Koelbl took one photo per year of a set of German politicians throughout the years 1991 to 1998. Non-Germans wil probably only be familiar with the faces of Gerhard Schröder, the current Chancellor, and Joschka Fischer, his deputy and Germany's foreign minister. It's too bad the photos end in 1998 when Schröder and Fischer came to power. It's very interesting to see how Gerhard Schröder almost doesn't change at all whereas Joschka Fischer undergoes some transformations (and not just in weight).
Ostkreuz is a photography agency based in Berlin which features a bunch of interesting photographers.
Especially since his big show at New York's MoMA Andreas Gursky seems to be everybody's favourite modern German photographer. Most of his literally gigantic photos are way too big to be shown on the internet - here's a small selection.
There's a lot of good stuff on Bertold Steinhilber's website. I'm almost reluctant to single out something. Most of his quite excellent photography comes under completely inconspicuous titles - such as excellent b/w photos of German Holocaust memorials, his very nice landscape photos from Usedom ("Oo-ze-dom", a not-too-well known German island), or his "German Bedrooms". The presentation is very nice, too, and ach!, he's my age or I'm his age and I guess I'm just jealous...
Update (7 July 2003): Herbert sent me email and pointed out a link with an interview where you can learn more about how he does those photos.
Herbert Dehn's gallery features nude photography, using palladium prints. The results are very pleasing but, depending on your type of work (and location), you might want to look at them at home.
H.G. Esch has an interesting portfolio for those interested in modern architecture.
Oh, and a big thumbs up from me for an un-Flash-y site which is impressively simple and amazingly elegant! I wish people would get over their obsession with Flash. In 95% of all cases, Flash is really just a complete waste of time for all parties involved.
German photographer Stefan Hanke has plenty of interesting portraits in his portfolio. Unfortunately, the titles are all in German. Click through them anyway, it's quite interesting.
Julia Christe has quite the cool portfolio - most of the photos were done for magazines.
(thru photo-genetic.com)
Matthias Hoch's work shows urban structures devoid of humans. More photos here (click on the links).
I'm going to refrain from discussing whether this really deserves a Hasselblad Foundation grant given that it's basically re-doing Becher's work with just very slightly different subjects.
Like yours truly, Jörg Heieck is a German photographer named Jörg who holds a Ph.D. in physics. But that's where most similarities end. Anyway, check out the other Jörg's panoramic photography.
Steffen Ebert specializes in portraiture.
Corinna Holthusen uses a fair amount of digital manipulation to get her photos. The results are not always particularly tasteful but they're interesting in any case.
There are literally thousands and thousands of websites with photography of the nude human body (with descriptions of these photos ranging from "nude" to "glamour" [whatever that is]). Only occasionally I link to something like that. This is not because I'm particularly prudish but, instead, because I find it very hard to find work that stands out. Pavel Odvody's work does I think. I like how he uses what looks like multiple exposures.
But this is really enough of this kind of photography here - you can say what you want but this kind of industrial night-time photography is just a bit too Riefenstahlian for me.
I rarely link to photojournalistic work because of various reasons. I think that photojournalism doesn't really work that well online because the web makes it too easy to click through the pages. Also, many photojournalists don't give the background of the photos so it's hard to tell what it's all about. Achim Pohl is quite the exception with his bilingual website that contains some amazing photos.
Elias Hassos' work is a nice, yet somewhat unorganized, mix of portraits, landscapes and still lifes.
A variation on a theme (c.f. Robert Voit), another German taking photos of the new China: Martin Zeller.
New work by Andreas Gursky is currently being shown at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York City.
Claudio Hils' portfolio contains some very interesting projects. I found his website a bit opaque; for easier access to samples from some series click here.
(Thanks, Tobias!)
Jens Knigge's platinum-palladium prints are quite nice. I'm sure they must be impressive when you see them hanging on the wall (NB: The site is a tad slow).
(Thanks, Tobias!)
Thomas Ruff's students at the Art Acadamy Düsseldorf have their own web presence - have a look at what the talents are up to.
