Photographic Installation Strategies En-bloc and In-the-round

A Companion to Modern Art presents a series of original essays by international and interdisciplinary authors who offer a comprehensive overview of the origins and evolution of artistic works, movements, approaches, influences, and legacies of Modern Art.

This chapter discusses the variable nature of Gerhard Richter’s piece 48 Portraits (1972, 1998), including its different levels of photographic alterations, transformation through media, and installation strategies. Locating his work on the cusp between modernism and postmodernism, it discusses questions of portraiture, reproduction, and documentation, the relation of photography and painting as well as Richter’s treatment of archival sources through three theatrical staging methods and through comparisons with other art and performance works of the late 1960s to the mid-1970s.