For düsseldorf photo+ Konrad Fischer Galerie gladly presents three generations of Düsseldorf-based photographers who explored the photographic medium, its genres and techniques in their own specific way.
Already in the late 1960s, Hans-Peter Feldmann began collecting, re-ordering and recon- textualizing photo reproductions, amateur snapshots and everyday trivial objects. His Blumenbilder (flower pictures) recall 1970s picture postcard motifs. The flower arrangements are presented against a monochrome background and appear highly artificial.
The oeuvre of Thomas Ruff encompasses different photographic genres and methods – including portrait, landscape, architecture, astronomy, reportage, nudes, abstraction – either analogue, digital or computer-generated, archival material or found footage. In flower.s, Ruff is relying on a photographic technique rarely used in the age of digitalisation known as (pseudo)-solarisation or Sabattier effect. Using a digital camera to photograph flowers or leaves, the artist superimpo- ses positive and negative effects in a “digital darkroom”.
The work of Juergen Staack who studied with Thomas Ruff at Düsseldorf Art Academy oscillates between Minimal and Conceptual art and includes photographic techniques, sound in- stallations and performance. His travels led him to far off regions like Siberia, the Amazonas or the Aleutian Islands where he collects seldomly spoken languages and dialects for his works. From Mongolia and China he brought cyanotypies of shadows of desert flowers which only blossom once in a decade. In his most recent series „Light Sketch“ (2020), Juergen Staack discussion the relation between nowaday’s flood of images and transience: only once a day his beautiful flower still lives cast their shadows onto the open notebook.
