untitled

gelatin silver print on Agfa Brovira

Generative photography is an art movement founded by Gottfried Jäger. It is based on the ideas of Max Bense ("generative aesthetics") and Herbert W. Franke, with whom Jäger was and still is a close friend. The term first appeared at the exhibition "Generative Photography" at the Kunsthaus Bielefeld in 1968, where, in addition to Jäger, the artists Pierre Cordier, Kilian Breier and Hein Gravenhorst were exhibited. Forerunners of this movement were artists such as Heinz Hajek-Halke, Carl Strüwe and Manfred P. Kage, who were also shown in Bielefeld by Gottfried Jäger (as curator). These exhibitions in the mid-1960s were very popular and as a result a chair for photography was established in Bielefeld. From the 1970s onwards, Gottfried Jäger and Karl Martin Holzhäuser taught there as professors of Generative Photography, and annual symposia on theory formation were also held there. In 1975 the compendium "Generative Photography", edited by Gottfried Jäger and Karl Martin Holzhäuser, was published with a foreword by Herbert W. Franke.
(Georg Bak, Zurich 2017)