Note: This short talk was preceded by a laudatio, a summary of and commentary on my work to date, presented by Dr. Marlene Schnelle-Schneyder; it appears at the DGPh site -- in German only, however. Here's the German translation of the comments below. You can find out more about this award at the DGPh site. -- A. D. C.)
I thank Dr. Marlene Schnelle-Schneyder for that generous assessment of my work to date. And I thank you all for coming this evening.
In 1967, as a new member of the then still small but rapidly expanding audience for photography, I found myself deeply dissatisfied with the state of the critical dialogue about the medium, unhappy with both its quality and its quantity. Self-taught in the medium's history, not a photographer myself, I could find little to read that I felt spoke usefully and provocatively -- from a critical standpoint -- of photography in general or to the specific images I saw in books and magazines and exhibitions. So, as a young writer in search of worthy subject, I decided to do something about it.
I wrote my first critical essays on photography in 1967. In May of 1968 I hung out a shingle at the Village Voice declaring myself a photography critic -- the first time, to the best of my knowledge, that anyone writing about photography had adopted such a position or taken on the challenges and obligations thereof, though of course working critics were commonplace in all the other creative and communicative media. And I began to publish my thoughts on the medium in whatever vehicles I could find or develop for a running public commentary on a territory of activity that I defined as broadly as possible: everything from holography to photo-realist painting fell within my purview, as well as the entire span of lens-derived imagery, work made with light-sensitive materials, and other pictures made with photographic tools, materials, and processes.
Thirty-five years and several thousand published essays later I'm still at it. So I assume that this award represents in part an acknowledgement of sheer persistence. During those decades I learned that I didn't arrive exactly sui generis; Sadakichi Hartmann and Charles Caffin had written at length about photography at the beginning of the twentieth century, Elizabeth McCausland had done so thereafter and into the midcentury. Minor White's writings, and those of Ralph Hattersley, had sparked my own thinking at the outlet, as had the work of Marshall McLuhan and William Ivins; to that list I eventually added the various theorists of film and media who'd touched on the medium -- Krackauer, Barthes, Bazin, Benjamin, Cavell, even such comparatively obscure figures as Leo Katz.
But none of these people functioned as working critics of photography. The closest analogue to what I had attempted, I realized in retrospect, was James Agee's writing on film: intelligent commentary from an informed observer, directed toward an educated general audience. I write in numerous modes and voices for a variety of constituencies, but that basic commitment lies at the core of everything that I've produced in this field.
I'm deeply honored to join the long list of notable figures whose achievements the DGPh has recognized in the past with this prestigious Kulturpreis, and to receive it in the company of my distinguished compatriot, the photographer Richard Misrach, whose commitment to his own exemplary and multi-faceted project demonstrates that he too is in it for the long haul. I note that, though the extensive list of past recipients of this award includes many whom I consider my predecessors, and on whose shoulders I stand in various ways, they're primarily scholars, researchers, and historians: Helmut Gernsheim, Beaumont Newhall, Gisèle Freund. This award cites my contributions to the theory of photography, and I'm certainly pleased to have that aspect of my work singled out for such high praise. But I want to make it clear that my activity in the area of theory is firmly grounded in praxis.
By this I mean to emphasize that my involvement with theoretical issues has resulted from my deliberate and primary engagement with practice -- both the practice of photography on the part of all those about whom I've written, and from my own practice of the craft of criticism. Some of my writing operates in the terrain of historianship, some has a pedagogical premise, some certainly concerns theoretical matters. But it all comes out of my fundamental desire to discover and exemplify, even if idiosyncratically, what it might mean to be a working critic of photography. That's how I'm known to everyone in the field who's familiar with my work; it's a label I chose and still wear with pride. My thanks to all of my colleagues from the DGPh involved in nominating and selecting me for the support and encouragement of my efforts that this award symbolizes.
I also want to express my appreciation to the various editors of European publications who, over the past 20 years, have presented my writings -- often in translation -- to audiences on this side of the Atlantic. Having my work made available through them to readers in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany, the Czech and Slovak Republics, Russia, the U.K., and other countries has greatly enlarged my audience and considerably expanded the reach of my ideas. I acknowledge them all -- and, in particular, Andreas Müller-Pohle of the journal European Photography, the first European editor to take an interest in my work and the one with whom I've collaborated the longest, and Denis Brudna and Anna Gripp of Photonews, who have published me regularly in recent years.
So far as I can tell, I'm the first writer widely known as a full-time critic of photography to receive this Kulturpreis -- the first, that is to say, who week in and week out sits down at his desk with his second cup of coffee on Monday mornings to write critical essays. So, in that spirit, I accept this award on behalf of critics of photography everywhere -- in the name of those who helped me found and formulate the discipline that we nowadays take for granted and call the criticism of photography, in the name of those who've come after us to enlarge the discourse to its present exciting polyvocal condition, and in the name of all those future critics of photography who have yet to see their first essays published. May our tribe increase.
Danke schön.
(This is the complete text of a talk delivered on the evening of Saturday, September 28, 2002, at the Museum Ludwig in Köln, Germany, on the occasion of receiving the 2002 Kulturpreis awarded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie (DGPh), the German Photographic Society.)
© Copyright 2002 by A. D. Coleman. All rights reserved. By permission of the author and Image/World Syndication Services, P.O.B. 040078, Staten Island, New York 10304-0002 USA; imageworld@nearbycafe.com.
