John Gossage
Spring
Spring, 1995
Gelatin-silver print on cardboard, 4.5 x 6.6 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur, gift Ulrich Görlich
1998-010-001
© John Gossage
b. 1946 (New York, US), lives and works in Washington, US
His various artist’s books allowed John Gossage to respond to what he considered Western photographers’ disinterest in the Berlin Wall. They are integral elements of his overarching artistic project of visualizing unpleasant, hidden, and repressed elements of urban space. Gossage published little when the Wall was still standing. For example, “Stadt des Schwarz” (City of black; 1987) includes no more than eighteen images. Only in “Berlin in the Time of the Wall” (2004) were a large number of his uncanny, black-and-white impressions made public; the photographs contrast dark fragments of Berlin with intentionally fuzzy contours.