Stephen Shore as THE American Inspiration for the Renowned German Becher Class?

DUSSELDORF, Germany, July 12, 2010 - With this spectacular thesis, the NRW-Forum Dusseldorf is
focusing for the first time on an important chapter in the recent history of
photography: the transatlantic influence on photography in the 1970s and
1980s. Right at the heart of this chapter is a friendship between three
artists that was forged in New York in the year 1973. It was in this
sprawling American metropolis that the 26-year-old Stephen Shore met the
Dusseldorf photographer Hilla Becher, whose typological photographic
documentation of water-towers, which she had put together with her husband
Bernd Becher, had gone on display at Ileana Sonnabend's renowned gallery the
previous year. Two years later, Stephen Shore and the Bechers became the only
colour photographer and Europeans respectively to be part of the legendary
New Topographics group exhibition. The exhibition at the NRW-Forum will
investigate the extent to which the students on Bernd Becher's photography
course at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf, the first generation of whom
became world famous in the years that followed, were inspired by US subjects
and image concepts from the 1970s and 1980s. The exhibition juxtaposes in a
kaleidoscope manner works by students on Becher's course that bear the
hallmark of this transatlantic influence and Stephen Shore's own photographs.
It will also provide comprehensive documentation of the emergence of the New
Dusseldorf Photography movement in early works. The exhibition will be
accompanied by a catalogue in German/English.

    Der Rote Bulli
    Stephen Shore and the New Dusseldorf Photography
    NRW-Forum Dusseldorf, Ehrenhof 2, 40479 Dusseldorf / Germany
    September 11, 2010 - January 16, 2011

    www.nrw-forum.de

    Please save the date for the press conference:
    September 8, 2010

    Images and texts are ready for download on:
    www.nrw-forum.de > presse.

    Or please contact:
    Petra Wenzel,
    Werner Lippert.
    Phone: +49-211-9660036,
    info@projects.ag

Please contact: Petra Wenzel, Werner Lippert. Phone: +49-211-9660036, info at projects.ag