ROE ETHRIDGE
For me, there are three sides to ’80s photography: Metro Pictures, Robert Mapplethorpe, and the Germans. In other words, there was appropriation, AIDS and the memory-function of photography, and the Bechers. In school, I took the whole “there are no more pictures to be taken” idea very much to heart. But then I saw the typological possibilities of the Germans, and the way they crafted images, and that brought everything back to taking pictures.
—As told to Tim Griffin
Martin Kippenberger’s Sympathische Kommunistin (Pleasant communist girl) (detail), 1983, as reflected in a mirror at the Chelsea Hotel, Cologne, ca. 1989.
Photo: Louise Lawler.
APRIL 2003
VOL. 41, NO. 8
