Typology 1979

Typology 1979 is the retrospective title Joachim Brohm has chosen to give a series of photographs he took in 1979 while studying at the Folkwang Hochschule in Essen.

Typology 1979 is devoted to recreational places and the activities of people living in the artist’s immediate environment of the time, the Ruhr area. Brohm further elaborated this aspect at the beginning of the 1980s in his series known as Ruhr. Yet people are hardly to be spotted in these photographs he took of 35 allotments in late autumn. Their presence is only evoked in the structures they built or the gardens they designed.

Some existing vintage prints of allotments were shown in Brohm‘s exhibition Color at the Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne in 2010. Joachim Brohm’s fully re-edited series Typology 1979 will now be shown in public for the first time ever in an exhibition at Beck & Eggeling‘s in Düsseldorf. Already conceived as a comparative series at the time, Typology 1979 pays tribute to the Becher‘s approach. Thematically, however, it describes the »flavour« of individualised utility buildings on outskirt allotments in an idiosyncratic and focused manner.

The new monographic book »Joachim Brohm Typology 1979« published by Mack/London will be launched at the vernissage. On this occasion, German writer Ulf Erdmann Ziegler will read extracts from his essay »You have to be patient. About Joachim Brohm‘s early typology of allotments«.