Martin Parr, Day of the Deadh,  Mexico City, 2003, Masgnum Photos
Patric Fouad, Women's Rooms - Brothels in Germany, Düsseldorf
Frank Herfort, Moscow, 2005
Exhibition of the Institute of Creative Photography, Silesian University in Opava (Academy meets Photokia)

The current crisis of many traditional photographic companies that have failed to keep up with the massive advance of digital photography, however, has resulted in a sharp drop in the sponsorship of the cultural side of Photokina. In spite of this, in September 2006 the Photokina Visual Gallery took place already for the third time on the premises of Hall 1 of the much-improved Cologne exhibition area, presenting a number of attractive exhibitions. Exhibitions were also held at other venues during the fair; noticeable among them for instance the immense prints of the historical photographs of Karl Hugo Schmölz, portraying the dominants of Cologne destroyed by air raids during the Second World War, the documentary photographs of the Dutch photographer and environmental activist Robert Knoth showing the deadly impact of ill-deposited radioactive waste in Russia on the local people and landscape, or the Bildeberg agency exhibition, portraying life in contemporary Germany with gentle irony. The main magnet of the Visual Gallery at Photokina, however, was the new retrospective of Martin Parr, fresh laureate of the Erich Salomon Prize, awarded on the eve of Photokina’s opening by the German Photographic Society (DGPh). Parr compiled his Assorted Cocktail from sections of both older and brand new cycles, in which he with characteristic dry English humor and subtlety showed the typical features of mass tourism, consumerism, globalization, and herd mentality. While the garish details of kitschy souvenirs, chubby tourists and greasy food from Mexico or Germany were close in both motif and style to Parr’s older photographs from England or Spain, his newer images of everyday life in Scotland heralded a return of sorts to his spectral 1980s´ England, full of absurd confrontations and visual symbolism. Another exhibition that drew large audiences was Patric Fouad’s Frauenzimmer – Brothels in Germany. These technically precise large-format photographs showed the interior of rooms inhabited by prostitutes in various German cities. Fouad was not seeking titillating views of places normally accessible only to paying customers, but instead employed the symptomatic details of garish beds, artificial flowers, stuffed animals, embroidered pillows, and lascivious framed pictures on walls and bedside tables to create a sociological documentary of the settings in which the oldest trade in human history is conducted in his native country. Of an altogether different kind was the exhibition of young Italian photographer Lorenzo Castore entitled Paradiso, already presented in Arles as well as several other photography festivals. His blurred color images of streets, backyards, bars and bedrooms are far removed from the traditional humanism of photojournalism and rather then social issues they reflect the inner world of the artist, his subjective take on people and the intimate moments in their lives. The other pole of contemporary documentary presented traditionally composed black-and-white images by Jürgen Escher (Germany) on humanitarian aid in various ailing places on the planet, filled with poverty, hunger, disease and violence, but also hope and longing for a better life. Escher’s photographs cannot be denied a certain humanist appeal, but they lack the visual qualities of Salgado, or Nachtwey. 

A number of fresh ideas and technically perfect photographs, where today it no longer matters whether they were created using traditional or digital technology, were on display at the group exhibitions of young artists. The exhibition of the laureates of the Kodak Prize for young artists was outstanding; almost all the works were technically precise, possessed of a solid concept and functional utilization of color (not one of the prize-winning collections were in black and white), as well as an emphasis on visually attractive rendition of both self-reflective and social subtext. Some works were “staged documentary” that obliterated the boundaries between reality and fiction. Protagonists of this tendency meticulously arranged spectral scenes set in strange rooms in St. Petersburg and Moscow, places with no clear function, where time seemed to be frozen (Frank Herfort), in a nuclear power-station and its vicinity in the Lithuanian town of Visaginas (Martin Schlüter), or in a house where puppets represented family members doing their morning exercises, having breakfast or having sex – and also committing suicide (Grit Hachmeister). Among the prize-winning works were also the naturalist detailed photographs of women during their morning beautification sessions (Malin Schulz and Sina Preikschat), an apt documentary from present-day Armenia (Lili Nahapetian), inventive portraits of Chinese artists from Peking (Tobias Habermann) and other works that proved that many young German and European photographers are moving away from the long dominant influence of Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, and other famous disciples of Bernd Becher at the Staatliche Akademie in Düsseldorf, and are looking for new themes and new styles. 

This was visible also in the international context at the exhibition of 23 university-level schools of photography, Academy Meets Photokina, where a single school from a formerly Communist country was selected – the Institute of Creative Photography of the Silesian University in Opava, represented by works of Czech, Slovak and Polish students. The winning works of the Fujifilm Euro Press Professional Photo Award 2006 were of a rather uneven level of achievement, as alongside works of quality some rather banal sports shots or details of frogs and newts were also honored. Photographs by Eliot Erwitt, Reinhart Wolf, Ernst Haas, Andreas Feininger, and other world-renowned artists were included in the Icon exhibition – 30 photographers of the Association of Freelance Photo Designers, which was however handicapped by the fact that their giant prints were hung all the way up under the exhibition hall ceiling, and few people actually looked at them. Photographs of Charles E. Fraser were a nostalgic reminiscence of the early days of Photokina, capturing as they did installations of exhibition at Photokina in the years 1950-1956, which from our vantage point are sometimes unintentionally amusing.      

Of the 68 exhibitions of International Photoscene held in various galleries and other venues, among the most interesting this year were above all the retrospective of the American pioneer of conceptual photography and new topography, Ed Ruscha, held at the Ludwig Museum, the extensive, but rather uneven exhibition God in Germany at the Kunsthaus Rhenania, and the exhibition of photographs of the fascinating dehumanized jungle of Hong Kong tenement houses by Michael Wolf (Germany) at the Laif Agency’s exhibition room. German inter-war photography was represented by the impromptu street shots of Friedrich Seidenstücker and little-known reportage photographs by Hannes M. Flach from the car races at Nürburgring. In comparison to the dozens of outstanding exhibitions at the International Photoscene in the 1980s and 1990s, there was little to see this year, and moreover the selection of exhibitions in the official program struck one as rather random. It was evident that the International Photoscene in Cologne is not in its heyday.
                             
Vladimír Birgus
Fotograf 8/2006