BROHM, Joachim - Ruhr

Personal statement of the photographer Joachim BROHM

"i wanted to show people in a changing environment: What do they look like, what are they engaged in, what activities are shaping up?" (Joachim BROHM)

Background information

With this work, he was one of the first to take the themes of American photography - 19th century landscape photography and topographical photography from 1970 onwards - and transfer them to a European context. 'Ruhr' is an integral link between U.S. and European photography, whose special significance is made accessible with this first complete monograph." (© Steidl Verlag, 2007)
"Joachim BROHM was one of the first photographic artists in Germany to photograph exclusively in color, starting in the late 1970s. His approach 'the color lends his pictures credibility in the documentary sense', (© Joachim BROHM) thus contradicted the trend of the time: he placed photographic naturalism against omnipresent advertising aesthetics, documentation against staging, sobriety against image effects, subdued against powerful and contrasting colors - photographic role models such as Stephen SHORE and Lewis BALTZ, who would go on to world fame, encouraged him to continue on his path and further develop the approach: He combined mostly deserted landscape scenes with his interest in social interaction, which also turned his photographs into small social studies: They show how man changes the landscape - and the landscape changes him. His photographs of the Ruhr region were taken at a time when amusement parks and man-made lakes were helping to shed the image of the desolate coal-mining region. From the perspective of a neutral observer, Joachim BROHM shows the transition from work to leisure that accompanies the change from rural to urban." (© Deutsche Börse Photography)

Content

This series of out-of-print photographs, 'Ruhr,' by German photographer Joachim BROHM, documents the German Ruhr region during its industrial decline from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s. "In the process, he reveals structures in the landscape that would otherwise remain obscured. The elevated vantage point characteristic of many of his photographs enhances the impression of photographic oversight, which he himself calls 'all-over.' The absence of a clear center point and a depth of field that extends across the image help individual scenes coalesce into a situational shot. 'The whole picture is the subject - the viewer can choose his focus.' In this way, he draws attention to the big picture - with great attention to detail." (© Deutsche Börse Photography)

About German photographer, Joachim BROHM (b. 1955)

Photo books by as well as with works by Joachim BROHM