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Gottfried Jäger
From DE, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Bielefeld
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Artworks on
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Editions on
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Gottfried Jäger is a pioneering figure in the field of "abstract" photography since the early 1960s. He sees photography not only as a means of representing external conditions but as an artistic object in itself. His work has influenced a new generation of photographic artists, such as James Welling, Walid Beshty, Liz Deschenes, and Marco Breuer. He has received numerous accolades for his contributions to German photographic art, including the Culture Prize of the German Society for Photography in 2014, which recognized his academic achievements as a photo theorist and photo historian.
Jäger's works are "photographs of photography" that reveal the hidden image in the photographic universe. His image orders emerge through partly logical, partly random series of images, akin to experimental investigations in a scientific laboratory. His series reflect the logic of the apparatus and the controlled and repeatable process of finding and creating images. His early works include "Gradations" (1983), visible through photographic black-and-white material, and "Chromogenic Series" (from 1980). He transitioned to computer-related works in the 1990s with his "Mosaics," which he calls "snapshots" from the data network.
Jäger's work is connected to other disciplines of the "concrete" arts, including concrete music, concrete poetry, and concrete visual art. He has also devoted himself to the formation of concepts, as evident in his more than thirty books, including "The Art of Abstract Photography" (2002), "Can Photography Capture our Time in Images? A Time-Critical Balance" (2004), and "Concrete Photography" (2005). His artistic path is marked by numerous international exhibitions and works in important museums and collections. He has participated in the first generation of early computer art and its manifestations, such as "Experiments in Art and Technology" (1968), "New Tendencies" (1969), and "Wege zur Computerkunst" (1970-1976).
