Numerous accounts of the ‘70s militant leftist Red Army Faction, or the Baader-Meinhof group, have been published over the past 40 years. Here, Arwed Messmer (born 1964) takes images made by police photographers at the time—pictures of demonstrators, crime-scene photographs and mug shots—to create a narrative arc from the beginnings of the movement in the early ‘70s to the eruptions of violence in 1977 (the infamous “German Autumn”), the abduction and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the suicides of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe in Stammheim Prison. Messmer’s work therefore also has an ethical dimension: which photographs should be shown, how might they be shown and why do we want to see them? This investigation touches a key point for contemporary debates about historical documents with an aesthetic dimension offering potential for an empathetic examination of history.
STATUS: Out of stock
Temporarily out of stock pending additional inventory.
FORMAT: Pbk, 9.75 x 13.5 in. / 136 pgs / 135 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $65.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $87 ISBN: 9783775743464 PUBLISHER: Hatje Cantz AVAILABLE: 1/23/2018 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: Out of stock TERRITORY: NA LA
Published by Hatje Cantz. Text by Florian Ebner, Uta Grundman.
Numerous accounts of the ‘70s militant leftist Red Army Faction, or the Baader-Meinhof group, have been published over the past 40 years. Here, Arwed Messmer (born 1964) takes images made by police photographers at the time—pictures of demonstrators, crime-scene photographs and mug shots—to create a narrative arc from the beginnings of the movement in the early ‘70s to the eruptions of violence in 1977 (the infamous “German Autumn”), the abduction and murder of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the suicides of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin and Jan-Carl Raspe in Stammheim Prison. Messmer’s work therefore also has an ethical dimension: which photographs should be shown, how might they be shown and why do we want to see them? This investigation touches a key point for contemporary debates about historical documents with an aesthetic dimension offering potential for an empathetic examination of history.
