Photo objects / Photo installations

Long-term project in which the photographic material does not occur as a medium but as an object of appearance. The object is the photo process itself, its material as an ideological basis. This results in “concrete” photography in which a dialogical relationship forms between two seemingly opposite principals, bringing together reproduction and production: they interact with one another and override conventional material functions, excluding force.

Initially simple exposures were on B/W photographic paper, games and visualizations introduced terminology (grayscale; photo corners), followed by self-images of the photographic materials (under and over, between, through; a section), in addition to installations on the theme of picture presentation, as well as the minute exhibition series in US museums. Since 1999, several series with the title Melbourne Experience were created during a guest professorship on self-referential photo paper objects (Leaflets; images). The topic includes photo paper work, photo objects, photo assemblages, and spatial photo installations.  

First presentation: Conference of Gesellschaft Deutscher Lichtbildner (GDL),  Leinfelden-Echterdingen 1983.

First exhibition: Gottfried Jäger, Photographs, Generative Works 1983, Galerie Jesse, Bielefeld 1983. First Publication: Gottfried Jäger: Material und Illusion; Minute Exhibitions in the USA 1983, both in: Igildo Biesele, Experiment Design, Zürich 1986, p. 114-115, 160-161.

First collections: (1) Marburger Kunstverein (1988); (2) Schupmann Collection. Photography in Germany after 1945 (1996, 2000); (3) Peter C. Ruppert Collection, Concrete Art in Europe after 1945 (2006), Museum Würzburg, Permanent exhibition.

1983 - 1989  

1990 - 1999  

2000 -