IG-Farben Haus (IG-Farben House)

Günther Förg’s photographic work is part of the Düsseldorf School, begun under the guidance of Bernd and Hilla Becher, and including photographers such as Thomas Ruff, Axel Hütte, Candida Höfer and Thomas Struth. Owing something to the proposals of German New Objectivity, they brought in concepts of typology and archive to the analytical idea of photography, often working with large-scale series, little variation and exhaustive repetition. In Günther Förg’s work, there is also considerable interrelation between painting, sculpture and photography. There is an evident interest in architecture in his body of work, which can be seen from the 1980s in his photographic series on Modern Movement buildings in Italy, Russia and Germany, for which Förg chose Rationalist design structures with historical or political associations. The IG-Farben Haus was designed by Hans Poelzig and built between 1928 and 1930. The grand architectural complex housed chemical research projects under the Nazi government, was the American military government’s headquarters and was finally taken over by the University of Frankfurt. Förg photographed it in 1996 when it was unoccupied. As in other architectural series of his, Förg worked in large-format, alternating details of the building’s exterior and its interior, and mounted the photographs in reflective glass, adding a mirror effect that multiplied the views and shifted the dynamic vision from photographer to viewer.

Concha Calvo Salanova