Next Generations

The “schools of photography” of the Rhineland are of international standing. Photography as a conceptual medium is associated with the names of Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf gave rise to the famous “Becher School.” Since 1990 the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Köln has run the diploma course “Audiovisuelle Medien,” an entirely new site of forward-looking teaching and practice in artistic photography. The artists of “Next Generations. Aktuelle Fotografie made im Rheinland” essentially follow conceptual approaches, but extend photography into space, the moving image, painting, poetry, graphic art and photographic graphics. Born in the 1970s and 1980s, they are well aware of the transience of images on the internet. They reflect on their presence in everyday perception just as much as on the conditions of their construction and reproduction, often as hybrids of analogue and digital production techniques. Against the background of the history of photography they take leave of old notions of photography as a reproduction of reality and bind the once alluring promise of reality into the echo chambers of their new artistic practice.

Artists:
Alexander Basile, Johannes Bendzulla, Mia Boysen, Louisa Clement, Natalie Czech, Owen Gump, Alwin Lay, Peter Miller, Anne Pöhlmann, Johannes Post, Sebastian Riemer, Morgaine Schäfer, Berit Schneidereit, Shigeru Takato, Anna Vogel, Moritz Wegwerth, Christoph Westermeier, Matthias Wollgast

Exhibition:
Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, 27/1–5/5/2019