Gottfried Jäger

Biography

Gottfried Jäger, son of photographer Ernst Jäger (1913-1998), learned the craft of photography in the years 1954 to 1958 with the master photographer Siegfried Baumann in Bielefeld, receiving his apprenticeship qualification in 1957. He then studied technical photography at the Staatliche Höhere Fachschule für Photographie in Cologne, graduating in 1960 from the master craftsman exam. There he discovered a work by the early pioneer of computer art, Herbert W. Franke's 1957 Kunst und Konstruktion. Its subtitle, Physik und Mathematik als fotografisches Experiment (Physics and Mathematics as a Photographic Experiment) became Jäger's credo, an approach that he maintained throughout his career.

In 1960, Jäger accepted a position as a technical teacher of photography at the Werkkunstschule Bielefeld and established the medium as a basic discipline there. In 1972, this led to the founding of Photo/Film Design as a specialisation at the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld, with contemporary photography and media studies. In the same year, Jäger was appointed Professor of Photography and Film at the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld in the subject areas Artistic Foundations of Photography, Photography and Generative Image Systems. In 1984 he founded the research focus (FSP) Photography and Media with the annual Bielefeld photo symposia. From 1998 to 2002, Jäger was visiting professor at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Melbourne, returning in 2009 to join in a symposium About Photography II with David Martin, Salvatore Panatteri, Emidio Puglielli and Patricia Todarello, 12 September – 4 October.

In 2002 he retired from Bielefeld and was given the emeritus status. On the occasion of his retirement, the institution praised Jäger's decisive contribution to photography being "given equal status with the arts of painting and sculpture. As early as 1968, he defined the claim of photography as an art form with the term 'Generative Photography', which stands for a systematic-constructive direction in artistic photography." Incidentally, it was not until 1984 that photographs had become legally works of visual art according to German copyright law.

Jäger was for eight years Dean of the Faculty of Design and from 1993 to 1997 Vice President for research and development tasks of the FH Bielefeld. Since 2008 he is a member of the University Council of FH Bielefeld; he is a member, honorary member and has been the chairman of many photographic associations for many years (DFA, DGPh, BFF, FFA). In 1992 he received the George Eastman Medal of Kodak AG Germany; 1996 the David Octavius Hill Medal of the German Photographic Academy (DFA).

In 2011, Jäger defended his PhD dissertation on the photographic work of Carl Strüwe in a thesis Photomicrography as Obsession: The Photographic Work of Carl Strüwe (1898-1988) at the Faculty of Linguistics and Literature of the University of Bielefeld.

Artwork

From the beginning of his teaching at the Werkkunstschule Bielefeld Jäger created experimental photographic works, such as the Themes and Variations from 1960 to 1965. In each case a single image with different photographic design parameters is serially, controlled and varied step by step. The sometimes extensive series of images ultimately lead to photo compositions in the sense of Concrete Art, whose works dispensed with representation in favour of the free image as invention. An example of this are 21 light graphics that Jäger created in 1964 as figurative equivalents to the text "novel" of the German writer Helmut Heißenbüttel .

One of Jäger's inspirations was computer scientist Karl Steinbuch's 1961 book Automat und Mensch, an early discussion of artificial intelligence which proposed that a technical apparatus, a camera or a computer, were capable of achieving intellectual results and aesthetic products. The text was brought to his attention in the mid-60s by Hein Gravenhorst, a friend and fellow artist in generative photography, whom he had met through Manfred Kage. Gravenhorst and Kage were together making their own "polychromatic variations."

In 1965 Jäger was invited to show his "Lichtgrafiken" (light graphics) at the group show Fotografie '65 in Bruges, an exhibition of rarely experimental and often abstract photography that was conceptually opposite to that organized by Karl Pawek, also then showing in Bruges; the documentary Weltausstellung der Photographie: Was ist der Mensch ('World Exhibition of Photography: What is Man').

In 1968, Gottfried Jäger introduced the term Generative Photography as means of constructing photography on a systematic-constructive basis in the title of an exhibition of the Bielefelder Kunsthaus. Apart from his own, works by Kilian Breier, Pierre Cordier and Hein Gravenhorst were also included. The title, which was also approved by Franke, draws on the idea of generative aesthetics (1965) of the German philosopher Max Bense promulgated in the last chapter of his Aesthetica titled 'Projekte generativer Ästhetik';

Generative aesthetics is an aesthetic by creation. It allows a methodical creation of aesthetic states by dissecting the creation into a finite number of specifiable and describable single steps.

Reception

Jäger's oeuvre has been seen in over 30 solo exhibitions internationally including Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Poland, USA, and Australia, but especially significant is his early inclusion in iconic exhibitions of technological and computer art of the 1960s: Experiments in Art and Technology at the Brooklyn Museum, (1968); New Tendencies in Zagreb (1969); and the exhibitions of On the Path to Computer Art that were shown in Germany, Switzerland, Japan, Brazil, France, and England between 1970 and 1976.

Jäger has authored over thirty books including texts in English: The Art of Abstract Photography (2002), Can Photography Capture our Time in Images? A Time-Critical Balance (2004), Concrete Photography (2005) and Light Image and Data Image: Traces of Concrete Photography (2015) and nine Jäger monographs have been published since 1964.

Awards

1996: David Octavius Hill Medal of the Society of German Photographers

2014: 2014 Cultural Award of the German Society for Photography

Exhibitions

Solo

1964 Gottfried Jäger. Photographs, light graphics. Art Salon Otto Fischer, Bielefeld.

1975 Gottfried Jäger. Apparative graphics. Gallery Le Disque Rouge, Brussels.

1982 Gottfried Jäger. Light images. Generative work. Fotomuseum in the Munich City Museum.

1986 Gottfried Jäger. Generative photo works. Gallery Photo-Medium-Art, Wroclaw

1990 Gottfried Jäger. Photo paper works photo installations. Gallery Anita Neugebauer, Basel.

1994 Gottfried Jäger. Interface: Generative work. Bielefelder Kunstverein, Museum Waldhof, catalogue.

1995 Gottfried Jäger. Photo Paper Works. Michael Senft - One Bond Gallery, New York.

1998 Gottfried Jäger. Photography. Gallery Arrigo, Zurich.

1999 Gottfried Jäger. Melbourne Experience. VISCOM 9 Gallery, Dep. Visual Communication, RMIT University (Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology).

2000 Gottfried Jäger. Generative Images. Lutz Teutloff Gallery, Bielefeld, catalogue.

2006 Gottfried Jäger and his collection of Concrete Photography. 16th Gmundner symposium on contemporary art, Gmunden, Austria, book documentation.

2011 Gottfried Jäger: consequences of consequences of consequences of consequences of consequences. Concrete photography. Photo Edition Berlin.

Group

1965 Fotograph '65. Experimental European photography. Huidevettershuis, Bruges, catalogue.

1966 Photography between science and art. Photokina, Cologne, catalogue.

1968 Generative Photography. Kilian Breier, Pierre Cordier, Hein Gravenhorst, Gottfried Jäger. Städt. Kunsthaus Bielefeld, catalogue.

1969 Experiments in Art and Technology. Brooklyn Museum, New York, catalogue.

1969 Nova tendcija 4. (New artistic tendencies). Muzej za umjetnost i obrt, Zagreb, catalogue.

1970-1976 Paths to computer art. Traveling exhibition of the German Goethe-Instituts, including Berlin (IDZ), Zurich (ETH), Goethe-Institute Tokyo, São Paulo, Brasilia, Rio de Janeiro, Bordeaux (SIGMA 9, 1973), Marseille, Angers: London (Polytechnic of Central) etc., catalogues.

1975 Generative Photography: Pierre Cordier, Karl Martin Holzhäuser, Gottfried Jäger. Internationaal Cultureel Center Antwerp, catalogue.

1980 German photographers after 1945. Kunstverein Kassel 1979; PPS Gallery Hamburg 1980; Overbeck-Gesellschaft Lübeck, catalogue.

1982 5th International Biennale Advanced Photography. Vienna Secession, Vienna, catalogue.

1984 Lensless Photography. The Franklin Institute Science Museum, Philadelphia, 1983, catalogue; IBM Gallery, New York, Prospect.

1986 Positions of experimental photography. Bielefeld. Kunsthalle Bielefeld, catalogue.

1989/1990 The photograph as an autonomous picture. Experimental Design 1839-1989. Kunsthalle Bielefeld, 1989; Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, catalogue.

Books and exhibition catalogues

Herbert W. Franke, Gottfried Jäger: Apparative Art. From the kaleidoscope to the computer. Cologne: Publisher M. DuMont Schauberg, 1973, ISBN 3-7701-0660-1.

Gottfried Jäger, Karl Martin Holzhäuser: Generative Photography. Theoretical foundation, compendium and examples of a photographic image design. Ravensburg: Otto Maier publishing house, 1975, ISBN 3-473-61555-2.

Strüwe, C., Jäger, G., Kunsthalle Bielefeld., & Kulturhistorisches Museum Bielefeld. (1982). Retrospektive Fotografie. Place of publication not identified: Edition Marzona.

Gottfried Jäger (editor), Jörg Boström, Karl Martin Holzhäuser: Against the indifference of photography. The Bielefeld Symposia on Photography 1979–1985. Contributions to the aesthetic theory and practice of photography. University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld. Düsseldorf: Edition Marzona, 1986, ISBN 3-921420-27-X.

Gottfried Jäger: Imaging Photography. Fotografik light graphic light painting. Origins, concepts and specifics of an art form. Cologne: DuMont book publishing house, 1988, ISBN 3-7701-1860-X.

Gottfried Jäger (ed.): Bielefeld photo life. Small cultural history of photography in Bielefeld and the region 1896–1989. Developments in craft, press, design, art and college. Bielefeld, Düsseldorf: Edition Marzona, 1989, ISBN 3-921420-36-9.

Gottfried Jäger: Photo aesthetics. The theory of photography. Texts from the years 1965 to 1990. Munich: Publisher Laterna magica, 1991, ISBN 3-87467-466-5.

Gottfried Jäger: Indices. Generative work 1967–1996. Three projects. Published by Claudia Gabriele Philipp on the occasion of the awarding of the David Octavius Hill Medal 1996 of the German Photographic Academy in conjunction with the Art Prize of the City of Leinfelden-Echterdingen. Bielefeld: Kerber publishing house, 1996, ISBN 3-924639-62-0.