Today, subjective photography is a stylistic concept referring to the free and formative photography of the 1950s and 60s and an important focus of the collection of the Moderne Galerie in Saarbrücken. It abstracts, is considered the photographic counterpart to Informel, and claims validity as an independent art form.

Subjective photography was not originally intended as a stylistic term – it was the title of an international exhibition curated by Otto Steinert in Saarbrücken in 1951, in which he picked up the threads of the avant-garde photography of the 1920s and 1930s: aspects of Bauhaus, Dada, Surrealism and French Humanism were championed.

Within the framework of the exhibition Face-à-Face, Dr. Roland Augustin, research associate at the Saarlandmuseum where he is Head of the Photography department, will give an overview of this exciting focus of the Moderne Galerie in Saarbrücken.

Biography:
Dr. Roland Augustin (1963, Wuppertal) is an art historian. He studied art history, ethnology and political science at the University of Trier and the RU Utrecht and received his doctorate in 1994 on the topic ‘The Taste of the New – the Motif of Tobacco Smoking and its Modernity in Dutch Art’. Since 1994 he has been a research associate at the Saarlandmuseum, where he now also leads the photography and scientific documentation departments. Augustin’s exhibitions and publications focus on topics related to subjective photography and photography in contemporary art.