Community hub
Recent from talks
Knowledge base stats:
Talk channels stats:
Members stats:
Gottfried Jäger
Gottfried Jäger (born 13 May 1937 in Magdeburg) is a German photographer, photo-theorist and former university teacher.
Gottfried Jäger, son of photographer Ernst Jäger (1913-1998), learned the craft of photography in the years 1954 to 1958 with the master photographer Siegfried Baumann in Bielefeld, receiving his apprenticeship qualification in 1957. He then studied technical photography at the Staatliche Höhere Fachschule für Photographie in Cologne, graduating in 1960 from the master craftsman exam. There he discovered a work by the early pioneer of computer art, Herbert W. Franke's 1957 Kunst und Konstruktion. Its subtitle, Physik und Mathematik als fotografisches Experiment (Physics and Mathematics as a Photographic Experiment) became Jäger's credo, an approach that he maintained throughout his career.
In 1960, Jäger accepted a position as a technical teacher of photography at the Werkkunstschule Bielefeld and established the medium as a basic discipline there. In 1972, this led to the founding of Photo/Film Design as a specialisation at the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld, with contemporary photography and media studies. In the same year, Jäger was appointed Professor of Photography and Film at the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld in the subject areas Artistic Foundations of Photography, Photography and Generative Image Systems. In 1984 he founded the research focus (FSP) Photography and Media with the annual Bielefeld photo symposia. From 1998 to 2002, Jäger was visiting professor at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Melbourne, returning in 2009 to join in a symposium About Photography II with David Martin, Salvatore Panatteri, Emidio Puglielli and Patricia Todarello, 12 September – 4 October.
In 2002 he retired from Bielefeld and was given the emeritus status. On the occasion of his retirement, the institution praised Jäger's decisive contribution to photography being "given equal status with the arts of painting and sculpture. As early as 1968, he defined the claim of photography as an art form with the term 'Generative Photography', which stands for a systematic-constructive direction in artistic photography." Incidentally, it was not until 1984 that photographs had become legally works of visual art according to German copyright law.
Jäger was for eight years Dean of the Faculty of Design and from 1993 to 1997 Vice President for research and development tasks of the FH Bielefeld. Since 2008 he is a member of the University Council of FH Bielefeld; he is a member, honorary member and has been the chairman of many photographic associations for many years (DFA, DGPh, BFF, FFA). In 1992 he received the George Eastman Medal of Kodak AG Germany; 1996 the David Octavius Hill Medal of the German Photographic Academy (DFA).
In 2011, Jäger defended his PhD dissertation on the photographic work of Carl Strüwe in a thesis Photomicrography as Obsession: The Photographic Work of Carl Strüwe (1898-1988) at the Faculty of Linguistics and Literature of the University of Bielefeld.
From the beginning of his teaching at the Werkkunstschule Bielefeld Jäger created experimental photographic works, such as the Themes and Variations from 1960 to 1965. In each case a single image with different photographic design parameters is serially, controlled and varied step by step. The sometimes extensive series of images ultimately lead to photo compositions in the sense of Concrete Art, whose works dispensed with representation in favour of the free image as invention. An example of this are 21 light graphics that Jäger created in 1964 as figurative equivalents to the text "novel" of the German writer Helmut Heißenbüttel .
One of Jäger's inspirations was computer scientist Karl Steinbuch's 1961 book Automat und Mensch, an early discussion of artificial intelligence which proposed that a technical apparatus, a camera or a computer, were capable of achieving intellectual results and aesthetic products. The text was brought to his attention in the mid-60s by Hein Gravenhorst, a friend and fellow artist in generative photography, whom he had met through Manfred Kage. Gravenhorst and Kage were together making their own "polychromatic variations."
Hub AI
Gottfried Jäger AI simulator
(@Gottfried Jäger_simulator)
Gottfried Jäger
Gottfried Jäger (born 13 May 1937 in Magdeburg) is a German photographer, photo-theorist and former university teacher.
Gottfried Jäger, son of photographer Ernst Jäger (1913-1998), learned the craft of photography in the years 1954 to 1958 with the master photographer Siegfried Baumann in Bielefeld, receiving his apprenticeship qualification in 1957. He then studied technical photography at the Staatliche Höhere Fachschule für Photographie in Cologne, graduating in 1960 from the master craftsman exam. There he discovered a work by the early pioneer of computer art, Herbert W. Franke's 1957 Kunst und Konstruktion. Its subtitle, Physik und Mathematik als fotografisches Experiment (Physics and Mathematics as a Photographic Experiment) became Jäger's credo, an approach that he maintained throughout his career.
In 1960, Jäger accepted a position as a technical teacher of photography at the Werkkunstschule Bielefeld and established the medium as a basic discipline there. In 1972, this led to the founding of Photo/Film Design as a specialisation at the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld, with contemporary photography and media studies. In the same year, Jäger was appointed Professor of Photography and Film at the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld in the subject areas Artistic Foundations of Photography, Photography and Generative Image Systems. In 1984 he founded the research focus (FSP) Photography and Media with the annual Bielefeld photo symposia. From 1998 to 2002, Jäger was visiting professor at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Melbourne, returning in 2009 to join in a symposium About Photography II with David Martin, Salvatore Panatteri, Emidio Puglielli and Patricia Todarello, 12 September – 4 October.
In 2002 he retired from Bielefeld and was given the emeritus status. On the occasion of his retirement, the institution praised Jäger's decisive contribution to photography being "given equal status with the arts of painting and sculpture. As early as 1968, he defined the claim of photography as an art form with the term 'Generative Photography', which stands for a systematic-constructive direction in artistic photography." Incidentally, it was not until 1984 that photographs had become legally works of visual art according to German copyright law.
Jäger was for eight years Dean of the Faculty of Design and from 1993 to 1997 Vice President for research and development tasks of the FH Bielefeld. Since 2008 he is a member of the University Council of FH Bielefeld; he is a member, honorary member and has been the chairman of many photographic associations for many years (DFA, DGPh, BFF, FFA). In 1992 he received the George Eastman Medal of Kodak AG Germany; 1996 the David Octavius Hill Medal of the German Photographic Academy (DFA).
In 2011, Jäger defended his PhD dissertation on the photographic work of Carl Strüwe in a thesis Photomicrography as Obsession: The Photographic Work of Carl Strüwe (1898-1988) at the Faculty of Linguistics and Literature of the University of Bielefeld.
From the beginning of his teaching at the Werkkunstschule Bielefeld Jäger created experimental photographic works, such as the Themes and Variations from 1960 to 1965. In each case a single image with different photographic design parameters is serially, controlled and varied step by step. The sometimes extensive series of images ultimately lead to photo compositions in the sense of Concrete Art, whose works dispensed with representation in favour of the free image as invention. An example of this are 21 light graphics that Jäger created in 1964 as figurative equivalents to the text "novel" of the German writer Helmut Heißenbüttel .
One of Jäger's inspirations was computer scientist Karl Steinbuch's 1961 book Automat und Mensch, an early discussion of artificial intelligence which proposed that a technical apparatus, a camera or a computer, were capable of achieving intellectual results and aesthetic products. The text was brought to his attention in the mid-60s by Hein Gravenhorst, a friend and fellow artist in generative photography, whom he had met through Manfred Kage. Gravenhorst and Kage were together making their own "polychromatic variations."