Symposion on Photography I

The “Symposion on Photography”, which took place in the Forum Stadtpark Graz from September 29th to October 2nd, 1979, was the contribution of the Fotogalerie im Forum Stadtpark to the Styrian Autumn. The basic ideas was to present a series of lectures “on photography”, reflecting differing viewpoints. The contributions taken together are meant to give a complex, discriminating and up to date defintion of the medium of photography.

The contributions of the photographers Lee Friedlander and Robert Heinecken consisted in the presentation of their work in the form of slides. The text accompanying Lee Friedlander’s photographs is the written record of his comments to the slides as well as to the questions from the audience. Inbeborg Lüscher in her contribution also discussed her own work.

Manfred Mixner, Peter Schlessinger, John Szarkowski and Peter Turner showed slides in addition to their lectures which for copyright reasons cannot be reprinted in this book.

Manfred Willman’s contribution to the symposion consisted in an exhibit showing all the sizes of photographic paper available in Austria (pages 114/115).
In preparing this book we are constantly reminded of the sad fact that Shoji Yamagishi would not be with us at the symposion.

Our thanks go to all participants of the symposion for allowing us to reprint their lectures thus making this publication possible.
Furthermore, we should like to thank the Bundesministerium für Unterricht und Kunst and the Kulturreferat der Steiermärkischen Landesregierung for their financial support. Our project would not have been possible without it.

Manfred Willman
Christine Frinsinghelli