Peter Keetman
EXHIBITION Jul 7 — Sep 9, 2006
Exhibition Text
The Kicken II exhibition commemorates a birthday: photographer Peter Keetman (1916-2005) would have turned 90 this year. In this small show, little-known color work by Keetman, who died last year, will be shown.
Of all German photographers active in the post-war period, Peter Keetman is one of the most versatile, yet also one of the most subdued, whose oeuvre and visual language features an extraordinarily stringent continuity. He was one of the five members of the “fotoform” group and with Otto Steinert he was a formative mind of Subjective Photography. His Volkswagenwerk pictures from 1953 have garnered significant attention in recent years, especially since they were reissued in book form. This oeuvre of black and white work pioneered a new visual language, but it has not yet received the recognition it deserves.
Consequently, the color photographs shown in Kicken II are a true revelation. „Farbe und Struktur“ (color and structure) is a portfolio of six large format ilfochrome prints made in the 1960's on commercial assignment, printed in 2004.
Objects such as the „Eierschneider“ (egg slicer) or „Kämme“ (combs) are as brilliantly colored and as powerful as the abstract „Kunststoffprofile“ (formed plastic parts) or „Öltropfen“ (oil drops). Another special characteristic of Keetman’s work is that these prints can be viewed from all sides. The subject matter here is typical of Keetman: strikingly colorful oil drops and spheres, and if you look carefully into the pictures, the photographer can be seen with his camera and tripod. (Mareike Stoll)