EDITORIAL DESIGN

UM / ABOUT 1979, Catalogue to the exhibition "Unbeugsam und ungebändigt: Dokumentarfotografie um 1979", Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Published by Snoeck Verlag

In 1979, Roland Barthes distinguished between two ways of dealing with photography - its taming through aesthetic categories such as authorship, œuvre and genre, or its untamed effect, which he saw as rooted in the "awakening of unbending reality". Twenty years later, photography in particular is discussed as a document capable of setting aesthetics and ethics in a new relationship to each other. In the current publication accompanying the exhibition at the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, both considerations form the starting point for an exemplary presentation of historical convolutions of documentary photography, which are questioned with regard to their aesthetic, ethical, performative and political references to an "indomitable reality"; they are by: Robert Adams, Derek Bennett, Joachim Brohm, David Goldblatt, Candida Höfer, Miyako Ishiuchi, Ute Klophaus, Karl C. Kugel, Boris Mikhailov, Gabriele and Helmut Nothhelfer, Thomas Ruff and Raghubir Singh. The documentary attitude is not to be discovered in the photographs alone, but also in their use. The following questions are therefore addressed to each photo series: Who took the photographs, when and where, on whose behalf, to whom are they addressed, where and how were they first published? And what possibilities of approaching photography can be determined in the present? With introductory texts, the exhibition catalogue presents authoritative photographic positions and documentary attitudes. By looking back into history, it also questions the topicality of documentary photography today and will make an important contribution to the debate on the documentary. With a comprehensive bibliography of works, it offers an apparatus for further research. (Text: Barbara Engelbach)