Common Ground: German Photographic Cultures across the Iron Curtain
Sarah E. James
Yale University Press
English
Hardcover
267 pages
175 x 240 mm
2013
9780300184440
This ambitious publication is the first book to thoroughly evaluate the photography that emerged during Germany’s geopolitical division from the 1950s to the 1980s. With richly illustrated and exhaustively researched analyses of photographic projects from East and West Germany, including exhibitions, photo-essays, private archives, and photo-books, Common Ground constructs a comparative perspective, examining how sequence, seriality, and repetition were mobilised to produce forms of solidarity and political agency.
Author Sarah James places German postwar photography in the context of Soviet, American, and European photographic developments; the specific cultural experiences of the Cold War; and the shifting politics of German identity. By reconsidering the relationship between divergent cultures of the pre-war Weimar period and the Cold War era, Common Ground prompts new readings of major figures such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Karl Blossfeldt, and August Sander, as well as historically neglected figures such as Karl Pawek, Evelyn Richter, and Rudolf Schäfer. The result is a groundbreaking study of the political and pedagogical functions of documentary photography.
(source: https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Common-Ground-German-Photographic-Cultures-across/30693774014/bd)
About the Artist
Sarah E. James is an art historian, writer and curator. She is Senior Curator of Exhibitions at Tate Liverpool, where she is currently curating The Turner Prize. Her research specialisms are contemporary art; postwar art; the art and material culture of the former Eastern Bloc; the visual cultures and exhibition practices of the Cold War, including the unofficial exhibition practice of artists in Eastern Europe. She is an expert on the history and theory of photography; photobooks; documentary practices and photojournalism; ephemeral art practices, including mail art’s global and activist networks; art and activism, and the historical avant-gardes.
(source: https://www.sarahedithjames.com/)
About the Publisher
Yale University Press is a university press associated with Yale University. It was founded in 1908 by George Parmly Day, and became an official department of Yale University in 1961, but it remains financially and operationally autonomous.
yalebooks.yale.edu
(source:https://yalebooks.yale.edu/about-us/)
