Overview

The 'Dusseldorf School' has become a household name in the art world for one of the most successful and influential strains of modern photography. Coined in the late 1980s, the name refers mainly to the pioneer group of students of the late Bernd Becher, who in 1976 became the first professor for creative photography at a German arts academy. His students included Andreas Gursky, Candida Hofer, Axel Hutte, Thomas Ruff, and Thomas Struth, all of them today internationally acclaimed artists in their own right. Whereas 'Dusseldorf School' initially was used as a handy term for a group of artists with the same university's background, it quickly turned into a powerful brand name both in critical and commercial contexts. Despite its welcomed impact on the art scene, the members of the 'School' felt rather ambiguous about their perception as a group which turned them into stars but simultaneously risked levelling individual profiles and differences. What exactly connects and distinguishes them aesthetically is for the first time thoroughly explored in Maren Polte's pioneering study.

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In her thorough investigation, Polte shows how the Bechers’ visual analytical approach reverberates in the individual pictorial idioms their students developed, leading them, as Polte notes, on a path from ‘image into picture’. [...] fresh and much-needed perspectives on what constitutes photography in Germany today. [...] highlight important areas in which photography defines identity, and in turn how concepts of identity are applied to photography. The Burlington Magazine, May 2018, Jule Schaffer

Author Information

Maren Polte teaches art history and heads the Department of Art Mediation at Bern University of the Arts.

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