Fotobuch-Quartett

Photography is considered the leading medium of our time. Yet there is hardly any culture of discussion and debate about photography, as is taken for granted in literature, music, film, or theater. For this reason, Frank Dürrach, Oliver Rausch, Markus Schaden, Damian Zimmermann and Wolfgang Zurborn founded the Fotobuch-Quartett in 2014 as part of the Photoszene Festival in Cologne. In alternating lineups and with at least one guest, they each discuss four photo books, sometimes lovingly and benevolently, sometimes mean-spiritedly and viciously. 

On the occasion of the retrospective of Japanese photographer Daido Moriyama at C/O Berlin, this time Frank Dürrach, Bettina Lockemann, Katja Stuke, and Damian Zimmermann talk exclusively about Japanese photo books, their special features, and their status in both Japanese and Western culture.
 

Frank Dürrach, born and raised in Nuremberg, is co-founder of the Fotoakademie-Koeln. His teaching focuses on reportage, image composition, image editing and AI, history of photography as well as photo books. He is also the author of a standard work on photographic image design.

Bettina Lockemann is an artist and scholar specializing in artistic documentary photography and photobooks. She did an apprenticeship as a photographer in Berlin and a PhD in art history at the ABK Stuttgart. For five years she was professor for practice and theory of photography at the HBK Braunschweig. She has published several books, most recently Das Fotobuch denken. Eine Handreichung was published.

Katja Stuke has been working abroad regularly since 2005, among others in Osaka and Tokyo, but also in Chongqing, Paris, Chicago and Sarajevo. She works as a photographer, artist, curator and initiator, often together with Oliver Sieber, with whom she also realizes various formats under the title ANT!FOTO. They have regularly organized and curated cultural exchanges between Düsseldorf and Osaka. Currently they are leading the seminar International Perspectives at the HSD Düsseldorf.

Damian Zimmermann is a photographer himself and works as a freelance art critic with a focus on photography, running a photography blog since 2009 and curating exhibitions. Since 2013 he has been part of the new team of the International Photoscene Cologne, which organizes Germany's oldest photography festival every two years.