People Pictures – Picture People
August 5 – 28, 1993
The world of images, disseminated by the various media, but especially by film and television, exerts a tremendous influence on human beings through the omnipresence with which it encounters us in everyday life. The images of people that it spreads, the idols that it builds up, are mostly only synthetic products, a commodity that has been tested for its media effectiveness. Images no longer have the
function of creating an image of man, of documenting or analyzing social reality, but their only purpose is to be consumed as images, whereby they become role models for human beings. Images are produced that allow individuals to borrow an identity, depending on their tastes. The image media, which are partly responsible for the fact that real Self-awareness in people dwindles more and more by alienating them from their actual needs, thus at the same time offer types of people as role models whose imitation gives consumers the security of being in the protection of the broad masses. This ultimately leads to a uniformity of society. Attempts to break out of it usually end in the marketing of new images. The power of the world of images is so great that, for me, it can hardly be seen separately from real life, as it affects our subconscious to such an extent that it exists for us more than reality itself. With this awareness, I capture situations of everyday life in my photographs that illustrate the intertwining of the media’s everyday imagery with our real lives.
The photographs created during the Otto-Steinert-Scholarship of the German Society for Photography (DGPh) in 1985 were first shown in 1987 at the Museum Folkwang in Essen, and were subsequently presented in several international exhibitions: in 1993 at the Blue Sky Gallery in Portland, USA, and in 1994 in Odense and Copenhagen-Hellerup, Denmark.
Wolfgang Zurborn was born in Ludwighafen/Rhine in 1956. He studied at the Bavarian State Institute of Photography in Munich from 1977 to 1979 and at the Dortmund University of Applied Sciences and Arts for Photography / Film Design from 1979 to 1984. In 1985, he was awarded the Otto Steinert Prize by the German Society for Photography (DGPh) in recognition of his project ‘Menschenbilder – Bildermenschen’. In 2008, he received the German Photo Book Award for his publication ‘Drift’. He was nominated for the Vonovia Award for Photography 2018 for his series ‘Play Time’. Exhibitions of his photographic work are shown worldwide.
In addition to his own artistic work, Wolfgang Zurborn is constantly interested in communicating the richness of the medium of photography in various forms. Together with Tina Schelhorn, he has been running the Gallery Lichtblick in Cologne for 38 years and has provided a forum for national and international positions in contemporary photography in over 200 exhibitions. In 2010 he founded the Lichtblick School. Since 1998 he has been on the board of the German Photographic Academy (DFA). In addition, he also has various teaching assignments for photography at German universities and imparts his knowledge in many international workshops. In collaboration with the German Research Foundation and the German House of Research and Innovation in New Delhi, he led master classes with young Indian photographers in Ahmedabad and Kolkata in 2012/13.