Photographic reports about artists have become an integral part of collective memory since the invention of photography. They are what mediate a picture of great artists without whose influence such photographs would be inconceivable. One such photographer was Benjamin Katz, to which the film Der Photograph [The Photographer] is dedicated: from the 1960s through to the 1990s he documented the national and international art market like no other before him.
The documentary-essayistic film is dedicated both to Benjamin Katz as well as to the forms and strategies of artistic perception and the mechanisms of perception. The 19th chapter of the film takes the audience on a journey in time over the foregoing thirty years of art history in which single actions and performances are especially designed for the film.

Der Photograph [The Photographer] (D, 2006, 135 min., color)
with Benjamin Katz and Georg Baselitz, blank (Rüdiger Carl, Oliver Augst, Christoph Korn), Johannes and Anna Blume, Jan Hoet, Ora Katz, Walther König, Ralf Küpper, Markus Lüpertz, Jonathan Meese, Werner Nekes, Rudolf Springer, Maria Anna Tappeiner, Rosemarie Trockel, Cony Theis, Verdi-Quartett, Andreas Walther

Project team

Direction, book, montage, production
Jürgen Heiter
Dramaturgy
Helmut W. Banz
Artistic collaboration
Cony Theis
Camera
Ulrike Pfeiffer, Jürgen Heiter
Sound and online editing
Andreas Walther
Post production
Christina Zartmann (ZKM | Karlsruhe)
Editing
Reinhard Wulf