The Red Bulli. Stephen Shore and die Neue Düsseldorfer Fotografie

Background informatiomn

"The unprecedented success of the so-called 'Becher School' has had a lasting impact on the artistic photography of the last decades.

Bernd and Hilla BECHER laid the groundwork for a contemporary redefinition of pictorial artistic positions within photography since the 1960s with their documentations of technical architectures of the industrial age, as consistently propagated by the American Conceptual and Minimal Art ,
In the course of teaching, which Bernd BECHER held from 1976 to 1996 at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, new artistic conceptions formed on this basis that reflected the conditions of the photographic image.

His students Andreas GURSKY, Candida HÖFER, Axel HÜTTE, Thomas RUFF and Thomas STRUTH are among the protagonists of this development. In the international context, they received high respect and once again brought Düsseldorf into the focus of the global art world.
'Rote Bulli' sheds light on the early stages of this development in their concrete reception-historical contexts. The focus is on the mutual influences between the pictorial concepts that emerge in Dusseldorf and time-parallel innovations, which were represented by the US 'New-Color Photography' and the 'New Topographics'. The serial works of the BECHERs have been present in the American art scene through gallery and museum presentations since the early 1970s.

In the spring of 1977, Stephen SHORE was dedicated to a comprehensive solo show at the Städtische Kunsthalle in Duesseldorf. His photographic work inspired the students of the BECHER class in very different ways.
The catalog explores the exciting web of mutual influences, exposes the perceptions on both sides of the Atlantic and analyzes an important chapter in recent photo / art history." (text: @ abc)