Gerhard Richter

2.5.89-7.5.89 Sechs Fotos is a series of six black and white photographs taken by Richter in 1989. Taken in the artist’s Cologne studio, the photographs show figures that appear to struggle in an interior and include a self-portrait of the artist himself. Stylistically, they recall the intentionally blurred photographic images Richter used in his acclaimed series of paintings produced in 1988 based on the controversial deaths of members of the radical German Baader-Meinhof group entitled October 18, 1977 which are now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art. The date refers to the day on which two prominent members of the group were found dead in their prison cells. As source material, Richter drew on photoarchives of print and media journalists, using images that had been widely disseminated in the press and would therefore immediately resonate with a German public.

The series 2.5.89-7.5.89 Sechs Fotos was produced in May of 1989, directly following the debut exhibition of the paintings in Germany which resulted in a storm of critical attention. Richter himself has said of these paintings: “their presence is the horror of the hard-to-bear refusal to answer, to explain, to give an opinion.” In this context, the photos are provocative, coming as they do in the immediate aftermath of such strong and often polarized reaction to his work. The interior setting may be seen as mimicking the prison cell interiors of the Baader-Meinhof paintings and the use of precise dates in the titles also seems to reference the paintings, or to suggest that they are intended to enter into the same discourse. The actions of the blurred figures are ambiguous, and the artist, who crouches and directly meets the gaze of the viewer, is the only recognizable one. In this sense, they may be read as a response, on the part of the artist, to the reactions to his paintings, addressing in particular the nature of photographic evidence and the production of historical knowledge.

Pressetext

Gerhard Richter
2.5.89-7.5.89 Sechs Fotos