55 | 1996

The contribution by the young British photographer Richard Billingham to this issue of Camera Austria includes images of his family. Appropriately, these persons are viewed with a direct and intimate gaze; the photographs are not intended as documentation let alone critical comment. They nevertheless represent and speak of the social and also the emotional condition of the British working class. In these pictures, as in the work of Nick Waplington (see Camera Austria 53/1995) – thanks to whom the connection with Richard Billingham came about – the circumstances of private individuals become a metaphor for general cultural and social circumstances, yet without the individuals photographed being transformed into pictorial objects by the photographer’s artistic aloofness and striving for objectivity.

Ursula Böckler, for her part, in “Generation Uscha”, draws the portrait of a generation whose protagonist, “Uscha”, serves as its representative. “Uscha” does so, as explained in the interview, by “experiencing many different things with many different people from quite different spheres”. Ursula Böckler has been photographing “Uscha” since 1985, and this extensive series – though in quite a different way from Richard Billingham’s, is about private moments, about a type of authenticity, even if this goes back to stereotypes, to a life–style: “For me, images are what matters” (Ursula Böckler). This form of documentation subsequent to documentation is one of the reasons for the success currently enjoyed by Ursula Böckler as by Richard Billingham.
Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber present their “Urban Exercises” a series of projects which has been permanently extended since 1994 and was shown at a Camera Austria exhibition at the Forum Stadtpark, Graz, in December 1995. The collaboration between these artists and Camera Austria goes back to an exhibition of work by Sabine Bitter in 1992 which is documented in An die Wand (Edition Camera Austria, 1992). “Urban Exercises” centres on questions of urbanity and mobility at the end of the century, on the roles which the human subject is still able to assume, and on those circumstances and modes of functioning into which he/she is being squeezed. In this context Georg Schöllhammer writes about the alienation and isolation of the subject caught between modernist utopias and the counterproposals of post–modernism.
On the basis of this project, Sabine Bitter and Helmut Weber evolved “Edition No. 2 for Camera Austria”. “Formation” goes some way towards showing certain forms of “public space” to be a fictive creation, an invention and a means of manipulation. We are delighted that thanks to a collaboration stretching over a period of years it has recently been possible to complete this edition (see enclosed order card).

The contribution on Louise Lawler, curated as it were by Christian Kravagna, draws her work into a discussion about the theory of art. Starting from a rhetorical question she had printed on the posters on the occasion of her exhibition at the Neue Galerie, Graz, the author asked a number of international art critics for their comments on the role of the viewer (who was seemingly being invited to give a verdict) and also on the role of the artist herself within the contemporary system of art. It is the “question itself [that] is the criticism, the act of subversion.” (Justin Hoffmann) The series of articles on facilities for the study of photography continues in this issue with a presentation of the course in Photography and Media Studies at the Technical College, Bielefeld. Once again the creative work of the students, displayed in a layout of their own design, takes centre stage.
Finally, we would like to draw your attention to our upcoming SYMPOSION ON PH0TOGRAPHY XVI being held from October 18 to 20, 1996.

Manfred Willmann, Reinhard Braun, July 1996