The Dusseldorf School of Photography [Hardcover]

Stefan Gronert (Author, Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 28, 2010

The German photographic movement commonly known as the Dusseldorf School of Photography has become synonymous with artistic excellence and innovation. It began in the mid-1970s at the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf, under the instruction of the photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, known for their comparative grids of mundane industrial buildings captured with an objective and clinical eye. This school has not only birthed some of today's most important and successful photographers, but has also had a fundamental and lasting influence on the history of the medium. The Dusseldorf School of Photography presents over 160 images in a spectacular overview of the breadth of the Dusseldorf School from the early 1970s to today. This impeccable survey is filled with superb reproductions of the best-known photographs by three generations of key Dusseldorf artists: Bernd and Hilla Becher, Laurenz Berges, Elger Esser, Andreas Gursky, Candida Hofer, Axel Hutte, Simone Nieweg, Thomas Ruff, Jorg Sasse, Thomas Struth and Petra Wunderlich. With a scholarly text, extensive artist bios and a plate section dedicated to each of these artists, The Dusseldorf School of Photography offers the first comprehensive assessment of this important photographic movement-one that dominates the salesrooms and museums of our times.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...The Düsseldorf School of Photography [is] a must buy for anyone interested in contemporary photography... the book can serve as a fantastic introduction to the people who made contemporary photography what it currently is." --Joerg Colberg --Conscientious Blog

Anyone hoping to comprehend art photography today must reckon with the crystalline, super-sized work of Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, Candida Höfer and other Germans who studied in the 1970s and '80s under Bernd and Hilla Becher. In Stefan Gronert's "The Düsseldorf School of Photography," superbly printed images by these artists--Mr. Gursky's hypnotic picture of a "99 Cent" store in California, for starters--accompany a helpful essay that fills in gaps about the Bechers and their influential progeny. --Richard Woodward, Wall Street Journal, December 16, 2010

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Aperture; 1 edition (February 28, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1597111368
• ISBN-13: 978-1597111362
• Product Dimensions: 12.1 x 10.5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #177,256 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, October 4, 2010

By 

BfloBen (Buffalo, NY USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dusseldorf School of Photography (Hardcover)

This beautifully illustrated and classy publication is well worth reading. The introduction is informative and insightful about the photographers, their background and their photos. The photos range from the seemingly banal to the strikingly artistic. I returned several times to some of the photos to look for the point, the content, the meaning and each time discovered a bit more and learned more about the subtle and aesthetic qualities of photos. This is not a "look at my pretty large format huge depth of field pictures" book... it is about the search for style and technique and for the order, disorder and art that saturates our world and remains just beyond our view until someone with a camera says... "Look...this is how to see...and know."

1 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Why does the art world love this style so much?, July 2, 2011

By 

nerose "nerose" (Los Angeles) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dusseldorf School of Photography (Hardcover)

Meh. I just don't understand why this school of photography has gotten so well known.
Its cold, tedious work with little humanity or engagement with the world.
Surely as intelligent beings we can do more than behave as auto-bots with (big) cameras?

They learned a lot from Sander, but overlooked his greatest lesson: humanity.