presentation | representation

The artists in “presentation | representation” are members of a generation now around 40 years old who have been pursuing their artistic work for more than ten years. Many have lived and worked in Western and Eastern Germany. The increasing significance of the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig in recent years, along with the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, has heralded this evolution in the German photography scene.
Photography is still in a phase of transition from analogue to digital medium. With the technical changes comes a new understanding of both the medium itself and of the credibility that the medium still implies. The photographers selected for this show reflect the altered situation through their consciously subjective construction of authenticity. In their individual works, which cover the spectrum of artistic production in contemporary photography, they break with the evidential character of traditional documentary photography. Their pictures shift between being a presentation of the world and an artistically based representation of it, which is expressed by finding individual images that consciously entertain doubt.
This exhibition on contemporary German photography from the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen aims to take a cross section at this juncture, bringing the works of ten photographers into dialogue. The works range from pictures generated purely by digital imaging to series of photographs by artists who feel indebted to the authorial tradition. The different approaches of the artistic works, which examine the reference to reality, are presented and juxtaposed, highlighting the artists’ individual ways of finding their images.
Curated by Thomas Weski, 2007