Beate Gütschow

Beate Gütschow was born 1970 in Mainz, Germany.  She studied at the School of Fine Arts in both Oslo and Hamburg.  Throughout her studies she had classes with Johannes Blume and Wolfgang Tillmans.  Gütschow has had work in group shows, but recently she had her first solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Photography, Colombia College Chicago, and at Danziger Projects.  Currently she lives and works in Berlin. 

Gütschow produces digital “constructed” photographs of both landscapes and cityscapes.  She “draws on the work and traditions of Romanitic-era painters and photo legends Lewis Baltz and Bernd and Hilla Becher” (Egan, Natasha & Ono, Akiko).  Although at first glance her landscapes may seem like tranquil pastoral scenes, they are actually created to raise questions of control, inauthenticity, and the pursuit of perfection.  According to Egand and Ono, Gütschow’s two bodies of work “compel the viewer to think about humankind’s celebration of nature and our ceasless desire to control it.”  Differing greatly at first glance from her landscapes, her cityscapes seem immediately eerie and bizarre.  Gütschow’s constructed dystopian architecture has an almost recognizable qualitity to it, although eventually one realices that the scene they are looking at is actually nonexistant.  However different the two series may be, they both share Gütschow’s paintstaking eye for detail.  In reference to her constructed images Egan and Ono state “. . . each detail, including the subtle nuances of the palette and light, is carefully controlled, culled from an archive of images taken specifically for use in these seamless collages.”

 

Images:

http://www.aperture.org/store/books-preview-bio.aspx?ID=587

 

Review:

http://www.jmcolberg.com/weblog/2007/10/review_lss_by_beate_gtschow_1.html

 

Gallery representing artist:

http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2007/10/beate_guetschow.php

 

No website is available for this artist.

Thursday posting

Topic: Deadpan Aesthetic

Descriptive word: objective

“The adoption of a deadpan aesthetic moves art photography outside the hyperbolic, sentimental and subjective. . . . Deadpan photography may be highly specific in its description of its subjects, but its seeming neutrality and totality of vision is of epic proportions.”

-Charlotte Cotton, The Photograph as Contemporary Art

CHARLES, HAGEN. "Review/Photography; Making Industrial Buildings Look Like Butterflies." New York Times (1993):15-.

The author Charles Hagen is a photographer, teacher and writer living in Brooklyn, New York.  Hagen works as an associate professor of art at University of Connecticut, as well as a writer for Artforum, Afterimage, and Aperture.  Hagen is also a critic for the New York Times.  In his article Hagen references Bernd and Hilla Becher as successfully applying the deadpan aesthetic to give their photos of buildings a cohesive neutrality.  It is Hagen’s belief that the Becher’s persistent and meticulous approach to photographing industrial structures reduces them to variations of ideal forms, and “arranged in their regular grids, the works seem like excerpts from a collection of particularly exotic mechanical butterflies.”  Hagen also states that through the Becher’s use of the deadpan aesthetic, they are only relying on the camera as a tool to record objectivity, instead of to express emotion. 

 

I am interested in using the deadpan aesthetic to remove traces of emotion in my photographs.  I think my photos will be much more successful if they merely record what is in front of the camera, instead of what I want the camera to capture and express.  Using the deadpan aesthetic will really enhance the mundane and banal scenes that I choose to shoot.

Image: http://www.masters-of-fine-art-photography.com/02/artphotogallery/database/becher_01.jpg

 

Thomas Struth

Thomas Struth was born in Germany in 1954.  After studying painting under Peter Kleeman and Gerhard Richter, he switched mediums and began to study photography under Bernhard and Hilla Becher.  His early work, begun in 1978, consists mostly of black and white cityscapes which "offer vast perspectives punctuated by a seemingly endless rhythm of architectural facades" (Guggenheim Museum).  Struth shot these photographs and similar ones throughout Europe, America, and Tokyo. 

In the mid 1980s Struth started a series of color and black and white portraits of individuals and families.  This series grew out of Struth's belief that photography is "a tool of scientific origin for psychological exploration" (Guggenheim Museum).  This ongoing series explores how we are conditioned to see ourselves, and how our identities help to condition these perceptions.  The idea behind Struth's series of portraits carried over into his best known work, which are his Museum Photographs. 

 These large-format color prints capture both anonymous individuals and crowds as they gather to look at some of the western world's most famous works of art.  With this series of photos Struth "emphasizes museum-going as a complex social ritual of seeing and being seen, one in which the museum itself functions as both custodian and broker of cultural capital" (Guggenheim Museum).  

In the last 10 years Struth has also photographed natural landscapes, intimate nature studies, celebrated architectural monuments, and Chinese cityscapes.  Struth now lives and works in Dusseldorf, Germany.  

Images:

http://www.museumlab.org/wp-content/photos/Thomas_Struth_at_the_Prado.JPG

http://www.designboom.com/tools/WPro/images/blog19/ts2.jpg

http://images.artnet.com/artwork_images_424713569_401810_thomas-struth.jpg

http://horsesthink.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/skyscrapers.jpg

Interview with Thomas Struth:

http://www.db-artmag.de/2003/10/e/2/87.php

Gallery representing Thomas Struth/artist's website:

http://www.thomasstruth.net/