Joachim Brohm: Ohio

Joachim Brohm was among the first of a younger generation of German photographers who discovered in color photography a new medium of self-expression. At the end of the 1970s serious artistic photography was still supposedly only made in black and white, despite major developments such as William Egglestons controversial 1976 show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Brohms OHIO photographs were made in 1983 and 1984 whilst he was living in the state as a student and Fulbright scholar. His pictures show cluttered yards and houses and focus on apparently trivial and banal scenes of everyday American life. At the time such mundane quotidien scenarios were considered unworthy of a photograph. This combined with his use of colour photography, made the OHIO series a significant experiment in search of a new pictorial language. Joachim Brohm, born in 1955 in Dülken, is Professor of Photography at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. He had solo-shows in 2007 at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Leipzig and the Josef Albers Museum Quadrat in Bottrop. Others shows have included the Westfälischer Kunstverein Munster in 2003 and Fotomuseum Winterthur in 2002. His books include Ruhr, Areal and Kray (1995). Brohms work is included in major collections internationally. Thomas Weski, born in Hanover in 1953, is chief curator at the Haus der Kunst in Munich where he has mounted, among others, Turning Back works by Robert Adams, Click Doubleclick - the documentary factor, a major exhibition on Andreas Gursky, and PARRWORLD, a presentation of Martin Parrs various collections. Weski is working with co-curator Elisabeth Sussman on a retrospective of William Eggleston for the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York for the fall of 2009.