Art

The Place of the Photograph in the Work of Peter Downsbrough

Alexander Streitberger

Since the late 1960s Peter Downsbrough has been an important figure in contemporary art, associated with major international art movements as minimal art, conceptual art, and visual poetry. In his artistic work he explores various fields including sculpture, architecture, books, film, and photography.

This book provides, for the first time, a profound insight into Downsbrough’s diverse and complex use of photography within his artistic work over the last 40 years. A substantial essay by Alexander Streitberger discusses the artist’s photographic work – which includes single prints, series, postcards, collages, and books – within its aesthetic and historical context. Streitberger relates Downsbrough’s work to fundamental issues of photographic practice and discourse such as the photograph as document, the representation of urban space, space-time relations, collage as an aesthetic and political means of expression, the relationship between still and moving image, and the context of presentation. The rich image material – some of which has never been published before – is arranged by the artist himself in order to create a fertile exchange between the topics of the text and his own intervention. Concluding with an exclusive interview with the artist, the book offers a real dialogue between artistic practice and theoretical reflexion.

alexander streitberger is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the Université Catholique de Louvain (ucl) and director of the Lieven Gevaert Centre for Photography.

Recently published in the Lieven Gevaert Series The Art of Strip Photography. Making Still Images with a Moving Camera, Maarten Vanvolsem € 34,50, isbn 978 90 5867 840 9, 2010, English € 39,50 isbn 978 90 5867 872 0 07/2011 17 x 23 cm Paperback ca. 200 p. richly illustrated nur 652 Lieven Gevaert Series 12 English

For more information about the series, visit the website www.lgseries.be