Riebesehl, whom they identified as their artistic
fathers. The other, more important development
can be described as the integration of photogra-
phy into all existing concepts of art, but used
mainly as a means of documenting the artist’s
ownbody.DieterAppelthadbeentheforgotten
forerunner of this movement, but all of those who
followed him, from Gerhard Richter to Ju ̈rgen
Klauke, Katharina Sieverding, and Klaus Rinke
with Monica Baumgartl to Anna and Bernhard
Johanne Blume, owed a great deal to his efforts
and emphasis. Painter Sigmar Polke, who inte-
grated reproduction technologies and photo-
chemistry into classical as well as Pop forms of
painting, explored new territory that has proven
to be extraordinarily influential. All of these art-
ists became teachers at various German art acade-
mies but did found stylistic schools of their own.
Theauteurmovement was equally strong in Aus-
tria, and some of its proponents like Manfred Will-
mann, Cora Pongraz, Michael Mauracher, and
Margherita Spiluttini gained world fame. On the
other hand, there was the Wiener Aktionismus
(Vienna Actionism) of performance and body art,
which initiated the use of photography in the visual
arts on a definitely new level. Protagonists of this
development were Peter Weibel, Rudolf Schwarz-
kogler, Heinz Cibulka, Guenther Brus, and others
who did not record their actions themselves but
with the help of press photographer Ludwig Hof-
fenreich. This movement forms the background
against which more recent artists such as Valerie
Export have emerged.
The work of Hilla and Bernd Becher presents an
entirely different case. Starting with architectural
documentation of vernacular industrial sculptures
in—according to the language—a typical German
manner, the Bechers’ work around 1970 repre-
sented the best of Conceptual Art and craft tradi-
tion in photography. In 1976, Bernd Becher was
appointed professor of photography at the Dussel-
dorf academy and immediately began to assemble a
class in the traditional sense of the word. A number
of exhibitions made discernable three generations
of Becher students who themselves have gained
fame throughout the world now. The first genera-
tion is best represented by Candida Ho ̈fer, Axel
Hu ̈tte, and Thomas Struth; the second by Andreas
Gursky, Thomas Ruff —now his successor on the
Dusseldorf chair—Jo ̈rg Sasse, and Petra Wunder-
lich. The third generation does not yet carry the clear
profile of the earlier group, but includes already
well-known artists like Laurenz Berges, Johannes
Bruns, Christine Erhard, Elger Esser, Claus Goe-
dicke, Heiner Schilling, and Andrea Zeitler.
The success of Bernd Becher’s class concept sti-
mulated similar efforts at other academies. Angela
Neuke, former student of Martha Hoepffner and
Otto Steinert, was installed to a seat at Essen uni-
versity in 1983 after a long career in photojournal-
ism, and she pursued, until her untimely death in
1997, the set up of a large class of promising
designers and photo journalists, among them well-
known names like Joachim Brohm, Zo ́ltan Jo ́kay,
Volker Heinze, Karin Apollonia Mu ̈ller, and Mar-
kus Werres. On the other hand, since the late 1950s,
the LeipzigHochschule fu ̈r Grafik und Buchkunst
(Academy of Graphic and Book Art)—the oldest
academy in Germany—had watched closely what
happened in the classes of Otto Steinert, his collea-
gues, and his successors. Nearly every student at this
school had to fix his identity against the Western
advantages in photo-journalism, which was damned
as propaganda in order to install the GDR’s own
vision. Whereas Gerhard Kiesling, Lotti Ortner-
Ro ̈hr, Richard Peter junior, Wolfgang G. Schro ̈ter,
Erich Schutt, and Horst Sturm can clearly be seen as
the next generation of German propaganda photo-
graphers, others became dissidents of the system
and subsequently were not shown again before the
late 1980s. Ursula Arnold has to be named here in
first place, whereas the roles of, among others,
Ulrich Burchert, Arno Fischer, Evelyn Richter,
Detlev and Uwe Steinberg remain a little iridescent.
Since 1978, after the installation of the art histor-
ian Peter Pachnicke as head of the photography
class, interest shifted from straight-forward pho-
tojournalism to what was the official function of
art in socialist countries: the view on mankind.
Christian Borchert and Helfried Strauß broadened
the classical fields; Jens Ro ̈tzsch and Rudolf Scha ̈fer
introduced photographic design to the GDR;
Sybille Bergemann and Ute Mahler did the same
for fashion. During the 1980s, several GDR photo-
graphers earned international fame through maga-
zines and books, among them Ulrich Wu ̈st, who had
come from town planning, and a number of perfor-
mance artists using photography as a means of ex-
pression, for example, Kurt Buchwald, Klaus Elle,
and Klaus Ha ̈hner-Springmu ̈hl. Shortly before and
after the German re-unification of 1990, a number
of Leipzig students formed another nucleus of ar-
chitectural documentation, by no means minor to
the Becher class: Max Baumann, Matthias Hoch,
Frank-Heinrich Mu ̈ller, Peter Oehlmann, Hans-
Christian Schink, Erasmus Schro ̈ter, and Thomas
Wolf were followed by Thilo Ku ̈hne, Annett Stuth,
and a growing number of young photographers now
studying in Leipzig under the new direction of Joa-
chim Brohm, Astrid Klein, and Timm Rautert.GERMANY AND AUSTRIA, PHOTOGRAPHY IN