Book overview
Juxtaposing the greats of modern German photography through the lens of typology for fresh understandings
Following the eponymous exhibition at Fondazione Prada, Typologien: Photography in 20th-Century Germany offers a comprehensive survey of the last century of German photography in print. The curation employs the principle of "typology," or the categorization of instances or objects into neat categories for easy comparison (a product of 17th- and 18th-century German philosophy). Despite sounding rigid and scientific, the compartmentalized photographs allow for fluid and original connections across works delineated not by chronology but by type. The book's highly categorized organization bridges different artistic practices, now united by a common intention toward classification, affirming the equivalence of images and the absence of any hierarchy in terms of represented subjects, themes, genres or sources. This unique narrative of German photography launches new insight on and synthesis between the work of Sigmar Polke, Isa Genzken, Thomas Ruff and Wolfgang Tillmans, among many others.
