Stefan Gronert, LA SCUOLA DI DÜSSELDORF – Fotografia contemporanea tedesca, 2010

In recent decades, photography has risen to become an international symbol of Düsseldorf’s artistic production: the consolidated Düsseldorf School today represents the excellence of this medium, which it articulates in the most varied and innovative way. The extraordinary success of the phenomenon, which developed in a precise geographical and artistic context, had not been followed up until now by an in-depth discussion. This volume intends to fill the gap by organically addressing a movement made in Germany which, in terms of scope and global resonance, is comparable only to the Bauhaus in the 1920s. The architects were Bernd and Hilla Becher, who established the photography class at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf in 1976, just as their “typology” production was establishing itself on the German and international art scene. Starting from the process of renewal of documentary photography pursued by the Becher with extreme coherence and commitment, the three generations of artists of the Düsseldorf School have considerably expanded the photographic vision by advancing with their works in the territories of multimedia experimentation and digital art. Today the works of the former students of the Becher, welcomed in the main international museums and highly rated on the market, are an open window on the future developments of art photography.