Following three decades of documentary and humanist photography, a more subjective, hybrid language started to emerge in the early 1980s. Without disowning the legacy of their predecessors, photographers distanced themselves from their subtly critical empathy in order to confront social taboos and give substance to the men and women of their time. The marginalized or isolated bodies highlight the life that boils over under the lid of repression, the solitude of the individual within the community, and the irreducibility of the subject, especially in nude photography.
Exploring the margins of society, some artists joined the counterculture, including the punk movement and underground fashion groups. They captured their restlessness, imagination, rebellion and differences. Dressing up and staging themselves became a weapon allowing them to stand out from the crowd. At the same time there emerged a generation of photographers who chose hybridization, drawing on performative art. Most put the body at the centre of their experiments, translating regime-induced schizophrenia, existential questioning, and the thirst for subversion and speed in various forms. Another survival strategy, internal exile, is also shown photographically through introspection, an attentive examination of both body and face. The withdrawal from a couple’s intimacy or circle of friends, the pursuit of an alternative life “under the radar,” and the escape through dreams are expressed by many photographers of that time.
The exhibition is curated by Sonia Voss and was initially conceived for the Rencontres d’Arles 2019 with the support of the Rencontres d’Arles curatorial research fellowship.
Architect of the exhibition Mindaugas Reklaitis
Graphic design by Laura Girgaliūnaitė
Participating artists: Tina Bara (b. 1962), Sibylle Bergemann (1941-2010), Kurt Buchwald (b. 1953), Lutz Dammbeck (b. 1948), Christiane Eisler (b. 1958), Thomas Florschuetz (b. 1957), York der Knoefel (1962-2011), Ute Mahler (b. 1949), Eva Mahn (b. 1947), Sven Marquardt (b. 1962), Barbara Metselaar Berthold (b. 1951), Manfred Paul (b. 1942), Rudolf Schäfer (b. 1952), Gundula Schulze Eldowy (b. 1954), Gabriele Stötzer (b.1953), Ulrich Wüst (b.1949).
