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Background information
"'Schürmann's pictures do not tell stories; they visualize history. (Klaus Honnef, 1977)
The photographs in the out-of-print volume 'Wegweiser zum Glück.Bilder einer Strasse 1979-1981' (Roadmap to Happiness. Pictures of a Street) lie between factual stocktaking and personal enthusiasm. They are serial photographs of everyday life in a Dortmund street (Steinhammerstraße).
Wilhelm SCHÜRMANN (*1946) is known as a photographer, collector and curator of contemporary art. Having grown up there, he has looked at personal facets of his origins and shows telling impressions of a German microcosm full of details. The 'Wegweiser zum Glück' (Guide to Happiness) peeking out of a trouser pocket, the brochure of a lottery ticket office, is just one example of many of his fabulously captured images.
Content
For the volume 'Wegweiser zum Glück. Bilder einer strasse 1979-1981', Wilhelm SCHÜRMANN captured facades, stores, window displays, living spaces and people living in the street in countless black and white photographs with sensitivity and humor. A fascinating panorama unfolds, in which the Ruhr area of the post-war period - symbolic of the Germany-wide euphoria of the economic miracle and the subsequent phase of disillusionment." (slightly adapted publisher's text, © Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2012)