Der Rote Bulli: Stephen Shore and the New Düsseldorf Photography

It's New York, 1973. A 26 year old Stephen Shore, already established and by then only the second living photographer to have held a solo exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, meets Bernd Becher and his wife, Hilla, photographers from Düsseldorf, whose typological photographic documentations of water towers have been exhibited at IIleana Sonnabend’s gallery the year before.

Shore has already made the journey from Manhattan to Amarillo, Texas, that provoked his interest in color photography, and the Becher's interests tie in with his own. Two years later, the trio take part in the now legendary New Topographics group exhibition and a strong friendship has been born. Thanks to the support of Bernd Becher, Shore’s colour series subsequently become known in Europe, particularly in Germany, and he holds his first international solo exhibition in the spring of 1977 at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf.

Der Rote Bulli: Stephen Shore and the New Düsseldorf photography focuses on the influence these three photographers would go on to have on the industry in the 1970s and '80s and explores the transatlantic dialogue taking place in the world of photography during this period. Part one provides a comprehensive overview of two ground-breaking bodies of Shore’s work documenting ‘American life’; American Surfaces and Uncommon Places, made during the series of road trips Shore took from the mid 1970s onwards. The second part of the show explores the extent to which students on Becher’s photography course at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf, many of whom would become world famous in the years that followed, were inspired by US subjects and image concepts from the 1970s and '80s.

The exhibition is the first time this chapter in the recent history of photography has been explored in depth. As well as juxtaposing works by students on Becher's course with Shore's own photographs, the show will also provide comprehensive documentation of the emergence of the New Düsseldorf Photography movement.