An exhibition by Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, in cooperation with Landesgalerie Linz am Oberösterreichischen Landesmuseum

The exhibition Joachim Brohm. COLOR features a total of around 160 exhibits from different sequences of photographs created in Germany, France, the United States, Portugal and Japan between 1980 and 2010. Among the works on show are a significant number of photographs that were realized alongside the artist's major groups of works but are now being displayed and published for the first time. Included in the presentation are the only surviving early prints of Joachim Brohm's photographs of allotments in the Ruhr region (1980) as well as selected images from the groups Ruhr (1980–1983), Küste (1981/82), Paradis (1982), Ruhrstadt (1988–1992), Ohio (1983–1984), Areal (1992–2002), Japan (2006) and Culatra (2008–).

Based for many years in Leipzig, where he teaches at and is director of the Hochschule für Graphik und Buchkunst (Academy of Visual Arts), Joachim Brohm (*1955) decided even as a student at the University of Essen to work with color photography. Unlike black-and-white photography, which had long been established as an international artistic medium, color photography barely had a toe-hold in Europe in the early 1980s. However, at the universities of Essen and Düsseldorf, it was discussed as a new form of expression – especially in the light of catalogues and monographs from the United States. Contact with Michael Schmidt and the internationally active circle of Berlin artists associated with him also proved inspirational for Joachim Brohm and extended his photographic and artistic environment. On graduating from Essen in 1983, he took the logical step of spending a year at the Ohio State University in Columbus, where he also studied under Allan Sekula and Jonathan Green. In Ohio, his aim was to follow the current American debate about photography from a 'front-row seat' and respond to it with a practical project of his own that would produce a special counterpart to the similarly inspired photographs he had made earlier in the Ruhr Region. His precursors were William Eggleston, William Christenberry, Stephen Shore and Joel Meyerowitz.

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