John Gossage

John Gossage
Ohne Titel, 1997
Aus There and Gone
Gelatin-silver print, 29.5 x 21.8 cm
Collection Fotomuseum Winterthur
2010-004-007

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.