Exhibition of photographer Horst Baumann in Cologne. Review

The Museum of Decorative Arts in Cologne is hosting an exhibition of one of the most famous German photographers of the 1950s and 1960s, Horst Baumann. He photographed everyone from steelworkers and racing drivers to movie stars, but his significance in the history of photography is determined not only by his choice of models, the psychology and dynamics of the frame, but also by his revolutionary approach to color. And therefore the exhibition looks like a revision of milestones in the past of photographic art, as I was convinced Alexey Mokrousov.

Photographers are like children: everyone is happy in their own way. Lev Borodulin, whose exhibition is currently on view at the Jewish Museum, loved sports, and Valery Plotnikov loved studio portraits. And if a photographer goes beyond the usual, often what awaits him is, if not a disaster, then much less success.

Horst Baumann (1934–2019) loved everything, and whatever he did, he succeeded. The Cologne exhibition “Speaking of a Visionary” shows how versatile an author he was: he was successful in both street photography at a time when the genre of “street photography” was seemingly completely developed, and reportage photography – his book about steelworkers still looks like breakthrough, and portraits. He worked equally well in both black and white photography and color, making a breakthrough in the latter a decade before the “father of color photography,” the American William Eggleston, and the associated new color movement. But it is black-and-white photographs that occupy the most important place in Bauman’s legacy – it is no coincidence that in his archive, for 3,500 black-and-white photographs, there are only 750 color ones (though there are also countless transparencies).

Born in Aachen and living most of his life in Düsseldorf, Bauman was self-taught in photography: his entire education was in an amateur photography club. That did not stop him from attracting the attention of professionals early – the author published his first publication in Leica Fotografie at the age of 19. In the 1950s, Germany was somewhat reminiscent of Russia in the early 1990s: skill was more important than a diploma, and journalism remained the ability to grasp an event.

Bauman’s view differed from that of his colleagues – not only in its sociality, but also in its non-standardism. When photographing children, the last thing he looks for is smiles and happy faces; he is much more interested in concentration or even, in close-up, well-worn children’s shoes. So the fair with its carousels and clowns becomes a portrait of the era.

His portraits of celebrities from the world of pop and cinema were also non-standard. He photographed the great French singer, the muse of Saint-Germain-des-Prés Juliette Greco, for whom Sartre and Raymond Queneau wrote poems, the still young Jane Fonda, who was then still a sex symbol, and not a fighter for a healthy lifestyle, and the first “girl Bond” from “Dr. No” by Ursula Andress. In photojournalism, Bauman was less interested in the role of a chronicler, and much more interested in the role of an artist exploring the life of the working outskirts, the everyday life of a famous fencer, or the life of oil producers. Only once did he get involved in big politics, documenting the election campaign of the conservative Christian Democratic Union, but this seems rather an exception in his biography, which was built on the principle “I do what interests me.”

As a journalist-photographer who worked with major companies like Stern or the once influential monthly Twen, Bauman traveled all over Germany and half the world, including Moscow in the year of the World Festival of Youth and Students (1957). Perhaps his best filming involved Formula 1, which he filmed both at home and in England. Sports here are not glossy madness, but hard work for smart people, somewhat reminiscent of the world of big horse racing. And even when the photo is titled “Jim Clark in a green Lotus at the 1963 Silverstone Grand Prix”, the famous driver is nowhere to be seen. The album “New Matadors,” which included this photograph—the series is now shown almost in its entirety in Cologne—became an event in 1965, but still looks exemplary.

Awards poured in from all sides. Bauman more than once participated in the famous Cologne photo fair photokina and became its laureate. At the age of 30, his personal exhibition was shown by the New York Museum of Modern Art (not so long ago the museum included this exhibition among the 52 most important in its history), followed by exhibitions and awards in Paris. But by the end of the 1960s, Bauman decided to change his fate and instead of photography, take up art and design. He generally loved experimenting with his own life: having experience as a visiting assistant professor at the Higher School of Design in Ulm, at the age of 60 he became a student and entered the Faculty of Philosophy and Media in Düsseldorf, studying there for a good ten years.

Multimedia, laser-born art, ephemeral architecture attract him more than anything else, and here he is not the last. In 1977, Bauman participates in the sixth Documenta in Kassel. Success awaits here too: the laser beam sculpture – perhaps the first monumental example of its kind in the history of art – still cuts the Kassel sky at night. The Cologne exhibition, however, no longer talks about this, focusing on photographic heritage and somehow not emphasizing the short memory of professional photography. In the end, however, it is not only the photo world that turns out to be cruel, where they tried to forget Bauman as quickly and as long as possible, and at one time they were not even included in textbooks on the history of German photography. The curator of the exhibition, Hans-Michael Koetzle, even speaks of a “name erased from history.” The laser beam itself, although it cleared the way to new projects, did not guarantee a place in anthologies. But if the visionary is remembered, it is definitely and, perhaps, forever.