Intersection of Color, Luminogramm II (5)

In 1968, Gottfried Jäger coined the term Generative Fotografie, the name he gave to an artistic program adopting the methods of concrete photography and the style of constructive design. This program presented photography as methodical, systematic and serial - an alternative to popular ideas of photographs as realistic images. The aim was to achieve a non-objective, imagist photography based on intelligible rules and algorithms. By manipulating the apparatus through mechanical, optical and chemical means, generative photographers created their own pictorial world and “aesthetic states.” Here, the geometric constructions can be stylistically assigned to Concrete Art. However, these photographers’ works were more influenced by media theory, cybernetics and semiotics than by traditional art history or contemporary art theory, and thus form a parallel development to early generative computer art. In 2020, Jäger participated in the online exhibition of the Kunstverein In This Layered World, All Perception is Real. For the 2020–21 annual editions, he has for the first time published a luminogram, harking back to his 1980s experiments with light and color.