PHOTOGRAPHY IN EUROPE: AN
OVERVIEW
As the birthplace of photography in 1939, Europe
has had the medium’s longest development and
many of its most significant achievements. In the
twentieth century, however, an overriding charac-
teristic of photography was that it had become a
true worldwide phenomenon. Yet in many spheres,
European photography was innovative and contin-
ued to lead the world. The period between the two
world wars was perhaps the most fertile in photo-
graphic history, in experimental fine arts photogra-
phy, in the development of equipment and other
technical advances, as well as in popular forms,
particularly the use of propaganda and the devel-
opment of the illustrated press. Yet during other
eras, Europe lost ground. In the manufacture of
equipment, the center in the postwar era shifted to
Japan and the United States; in scientific advances
the United States, though the Eastman Kodak and
Polaroid Companies predominated.
The individual countries of Europe each have
their unique histories, and regional histories can
also be traced. Photography in Europe overall has
become a true topic along with the development of
contemporary art photography in the last three
decades of the century. And even within the realms
of contemporary photography, there are very var-
ious, different, and equal tendencies, and it would
be extremely foolish for example, to rejectlibre
expressionphotography in the name of documen-
tary photography or vice versa.
The most important and erudite essay on photo-
graphy in Europe was written in the first issue of the
magazine European Photography(1980) by Jean-
Claude Lemagny, curator of contemporary photo-
graphy at the Bibliothe`que nationale de France in
Paris. He introduced a model of an aesthetic clock
that served as a means for an original as well as
conclusive analysis of photography. It was a propo-
sal for the classification of the contemporary tenden-
cies in the medium of photography with great
attention to the survey of photography as a whole
and thereby tried to explain the different, interre-
lated processes without neglecting their differences
and correlations. In 1991, he did an update and took
asecondlookathisclock.
In his first classification of creative photography
in Europe, he started with 236 extremely varied
pictures in slide form and laid them out in a circle.
He let himself be guided solely by the visual rela-
tions that spontaneously developed among the pic-
tures without assigning them a definite place a
priori. He noticed that the main points of the circle
could be characterized by a few fundamental ap-
proaches toward photography. At 12 o’clock stood
the conceptual picture, the photo as pure idea; at 6
o’clock, the photo as material object, as chemical-
physical matter; at 3 o’clock, the photo as relation
to external reality, as reportage; and at 9 o’clock,
the photo as relation to inner reality, as surreal-
ism—including, of course, all the transitions
between the hours.
If we use this model for the classification of
photography in Europe at the end of the century,
what would be seen?
What was most conspicuous to Lemagny was
the significance of the 9 o’clock pole: photography
as a picture of the internal world, as staging. It is
undisputed today that photography simultaneous-
ly can be a medium for projecting an idea and a
medium for recording reality, and the shock gen-
erated by this insight has sent a wave along the
entire circle.
At the 12-o’clock pole, the significance of photo-
graphy as an instrument of the conceptual artist has
weakened: the mighty impulse from 9 o’clock has
covered this pole and almost strives to unite itself
with the photo as pure representation (3 o’clock). It
is this powerful drive that unites the internal picture
(9 o’clock) with photography as social criticism,
together with theoretical reflection (Victor Burgin)
and post-modern practice. It is currently in the pro-
cess of overcoming the contradictions between the
subjectivity of the artist as an intellectual on the one
hand and his duty as an observer of social condi-
tions and their inadequacies on the other.
At 6 o’clock the tendency toward an abstract,
geometrizing photography has disappeared in favor
of an intensive and multiform search for the sub-
stance of photography, for its means of expression:
that which Lemagny called the ‘‘resurrection of theEUROPE: AN OVERVIEW, PHOTOGRAPHY IN