Benjamin Katz: Discoveries: Cat. Museum Marta Herford (Hardcover)
Benjamin Katz, born in Antwerp in 1939 as the son of German Jews, rose to fame with his compelling portraits of artists such as Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Josef Beuys, James Lee Byars, Sigmar Polke, and Gerhard Richter. Hardly any exhibition of the so-called German princely painters—Benjamin Katz has been associated with some of them for years—manages without his subtle portraits. But his archive of over half a million negatives from more than sixty years of photographic work still contains plenty of surprises: in addition to conceptual photo series, in particular everyday observations—landscapes, views with traces of industrial decline, architectural details, found objects of everyday poetry, and even the momentarily absurd. There are many untold stories in the images, quite different connotations are called upon, and the enigmatic wit of the artist invariably comes to the surface. Benjamin Katz’s images are primarily narratives without words, connected to humor as a worldly wisdom, and to eloquent elaborations in simple stories.
Éric Darragon, born in 1944, is a French art historian who taught at the University Paris 1 Sorbonne until his retirement. He was also a member of the editorial board of the magazines Critique d’art and Perspective and has published extensively on German artists and photographers. Benjamin Katz, born 1939 in Antwerp, is a son of Berlin Jews. From 1956 he lived in Berlin, where he founded with Michael Werner a gallery. Since 1972 Katz lives in Cologne.