Joachim Schumacher
dal 27/6/2014 al 30/8/2014
Segnalato da
27/6/2014
Joachim Schumacher
L.A. Galerie Lothar Albrecht, Frankfurt
Das Gebiet. The focus of his work is his own habitat; the Ruhr area with all its facets allows the photographer to work intensively on his subject and to observe their development.
Joachim Schumacher, born 1950, studied photography at the Essen Folkwang
School in the 1970s under Otto Steinert. While still a student he developed an
objective, documentary mode of portrayal that differed significantly from the
journalistic style of his teacher and placed him in the vicinity of the American
photographers who were becoming known at the time under the label of “New
Topographic”.
The focus of Schumacher’s work is his own habitat; the Ruhr area with all its
facets allows the photographer to work intensively on his subject and to observe
their development. The enormous dimensions of the human intervention in the
landscape and the drama of this era of dismantling and upheaval was exactly
what Schumacher was interested in and what fascinates him to this day.
The pictures ... are not only historical evidence of the structural transformation
of an industrial landscape. They are photographs conceived with passion and
precision that draw attention to the surprising details without losing sight of the
big picture, captivating now than it has ever been. (Publisher Kettler)
Let‘s be honest. We have long accepted it. We have adapted and made our-
selves at home. In this Gebiet that has always been attributed the stigma of
inhospitality. That once served as a well tried background for the critique of
civilisation. That today again stands for crisis awareness.
The word alone: Gebiet. The name of a river placed in front of it, as if that would
say it all. Apart from that, it evoked cold neutrality. A synonym in which one had
to live and survive.
A life that was then enriched by a pinch of nostalgia after all, still frayed at the
edges. New words were needed: structural change, non-place: suburbanity.
They, too, were no help in the end. But at one point ahistoricity became history.
At one point facelessness was given a face. And became a myth, as it were, in
which the creatures could accommodate themselves. Early on, it was photogra-
phers and writers who recognised this.
Joachim Schumacher is one of them. All his pictures in this book bear witness.
They are from this world. That alone already distinguishes them. One may attest
them a poetic realism. A love, surely also a pain. But what is more important:
From a distance, the pictures seem to tend a new contour to this region in west-
ern Germany (comparable with what the pictures of Michael Schmldt today do
for West Berlin or the pictures of Robert Adams for the American West). Oily
now, after having made ourselves at home, are we able to discern a beauty as
well. Without doubt, we do have a lot of staying power.
Christoph Schaden
Image: Dortmund-Lanstrop 1977, 30 × 40 cm
L.A. Galerie Lothar Albrecht
Domstraße 6 - 60311 Frankfurt am Main
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