The territorial gains of photographic art

The exhibition and catalogue are dedicated to landscape representation in postmodern and contemporary photographic art. Since the end of the 18th century, the art of Romanticism has shaped our idea of idyllic and sublime nature. Painters such as Philipp Otto Runge, but above all Caspar David Friedrich, shifted the focus of ­attention on nature. But even Friedrich went be­yond Runge’s symboli­zation of a universal creative power within meta­physical fantasy landscapes. As a brilliant technical draftsman he transformed actual landscape scenes into images full of sym­bolic ­meaning. Many of these paintings captivate with their entrancing and oppressing depiction of spatial vastness and emptiness. A way of seeing that also shapes contemporary photographic art, which ­appears to focus ever more on changes of natural and commercial landscapes and examines the ­effects of industrialization – including agriculture – and urban sprawl. The book brings together works by about 60 artists from the collection of the DZ BANK art collection. This synopsis, divided into seven chapters rich in ­illustrations and text, reveals the great variety of possibilities with which artists approach landscape in the medium of photography: different types of landscapes are presented, such as ideal land­scapes and deserted areas, political territories, agricultural landscapes; in addition, ­formative powers and the potential for abstraction in the ­photographic image are displayed, allowing landscape to be negotiated as a concept, or even to appear as a digital formation.

Artists:  
Lucinda Devlin, William Eggleston, Beate Gütschow, Raphael Hefti, Dan Holdsworth, Carsten Höller, Roni Horn, Axel Hütte, Magdalená Jetelova, Sven Johne, Peter Keetman, Robert Longo, Richard Mosse, Heinrich Riebesehl, ­Thomas Ruff, Adrian Sauer, Stephen Shore, ­Hiroshi Sugimoto, Anna Vogel et al.

Exhibition:
Münchner Stadtmuseum, 30/11/2018 – 31/3/2019