Around 1979

In 1979, Roland Barthes in his book Camera Lucida set the stage for the critical understanding of photography as a medium capable of reevaluating the relationship of aesthetics and ethics and distinguished between two different approaches to photographythe aesthetic and the documentary. Extensively illustrated, this comprehensive group exhibition catalog takes Barthess notion of the intractable reality of the photograph as the starting point for an examination of the aesthetic, ethical, performative and political in documentary photography. Artists featured are Robert Adams, Derek Bennett, Joachim Brohm, David Goldblatt, Candida Hfer, Miyako Ishiuchi, Ute Klophaus, Karl C. Kugel, Boris Mikhailov, Gabriele and Helmut Nothhelfer, Thomas Ruff and Raghubir Singh. Essays presenting critical questions in the debate on the image as document are discussed by curator Barbara Engelbach, Jennifer Crowley, Lena Fritsch, Laszlo Glozer, Shanay Jhaveri, Jasmina Merz, Andreas Prinzing and Inka Schube, as well as a comprehensive bibliography.