Der Rote Bulli is an important new photobook that explores the relationship between the Becher-School, New Dusseldorf Photography, and The New Color Photography of Stephen Shore.
Edited by Werner Lippert and Christoph Schaden with text by Christoph Schaden, Tony Hiss, Christoph Ribbat, Gerald Schröder, Jeffrey Ladd, Maren Polte. With photography by Stephen Shore, Bernd und Hilla Becher, Thomas Struth, Volker Döhne, Axel Hütte, Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff, Tata Ronkholz, Wendelin Bottländer, Andreas Gursky and more.
Format 22.5 × 21.5 cm, 250 pages, Hardcover, 33,- Euro
Available now from Schaden.com
To support the book the NRW-Forum Düsseldorf has a just opened show, focusing on this transatlantic influence on photography in the 1970s and 1980s.
At its heart is a friendship between three artists that was forged in New York in the year 1973. It was here that the 26-year-old Stephen Shore met the Düsseldorf photographer Hilla Becher, whose typological photographic documentation of water-towers, which she had put together with husband, Bernd Becher, had gone on display at Ileana Sonnabend’s renowned gallery the previous year. Two years later, Stephen Shore and the Bechers became the only colour photographer and Europeans respectively to be part of the legendary New Topographics group exhibition.
The focus of the exhibition is on Stephen Shore, a key figure in the US New Color Photography movement. From the mid 1970s onwards, Shore made several road trips through the United States, documenting ‘American Life’, the apparent banality of which caused incredible irritation among his contemporaries. The first part of the exhibition will provide a comprehensive overview of Shore’s ground-breaking work in the 1970s and 1980s with bodies of works from the projects American Surfaces and Uncommon Places.
The exhibition also explores the innovative motifs that Becher’s class developed in the area between their own photographic tradition and that of the US tradition.
The exhibition investigates the extent to which the students on Bernd Becher’s photography course at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, were inspired by US subjects and image concepts from the 1970s and 1980s. The exhibition juxtaposes works by students on Becher’s course that bear the hallmark of this transatlantic influence and Stephen Shore’s own photographs.
Participating artists: Stephen Shore, Bernd und Hilla Becher, Thomas Struth, Axel Hütte, Tata Ronkholz, Miles Coolidge, Martin Rosswog, Thomas Ruff, Candida Höfer, Claus Goedicke, Simone Nieweg, Stefan Schneider, Kris Scholz, Wendelin Bottländer, Elger Esser, Andreas Gursky, Boris Becker, Bernhard Fuchs, Laurenz Berges, Andi Brenner, Volker Döhne, Claudia Fährenkemper, Matthias Koch
