TrAIN

Resident Artist - KSB at TrAIN 2006/07

Götz Diergarten
triptych from the series METROpolis (Embankment, London, 2006)
Courtesy and © the atist

Photographer Götz Diergarten (b. Mannheim, 1972) studied in Düsseldorf with Bernd Becher, who with Hilla Becher was highly influential in the development of the new German photography exemplified by the work of Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff.

Diergarten shares methodological parallels with the Bechers’ conceptually-oriented black and white photographs, including the use of typology as a means to structure photographic series. His images of vernacular architecture emphasise colour and surface, building a relationship between photography and colour field and constructivist painting.

Since 2000, he has systematically researched beach huts and cabins along the European coast, producing sets of typologies and single images. The continuing extension of this series to the East coast of England has included images of empty shelters and benches, shuttered up beachside stalls and boarded up facades.

Diergarten was the KSB Artist-in-Residence at TrAIN for 2006-07. During this residency he held workshops with students at Camberwell College of Arts, participated in the TrAIn Open Lecture programme and researched and developed a new project. Entitled METROpolis, the project systematically explored the underground railway stations of 22 European capital cities. His photographs of these public yet anonymous spaces aim to extract the unique from the banal, concentrating on colour and form, they expose differences from country to country. The completed series will be disseminated in various ways. Photographs from the residency will be exhibited at the KSB in 2007, and they will later be developed into a public billboard exhibition and published in the form of a book.