Tuesday, March 20

Sparks’s and Richter’s source image.

To the left is the primary image that Meredyth Sparks and Gerhard Richter uses for their work. This is a fairly well-known image to people familiar with the Red Army Faction. According to Richard Huffman, the author of the forthcoming book This is Baader-Meinhof (publisher unknown), “The images come from full-body images taken when Ensslin was in police custody. I believe that they are from photos taken of Ensslin as she is entering the courthouse built on the the grounds of Stammheim prison, especially for the Baader-Meinhof trial.” What’s not known is if this image is an official West German police photograph or a newspaper photograph. I am curious to know how the image was circulated in the late 1970s. (Robert Storr’s monograph on Richter probably has the answer, but I do not own a copy of it.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

A question for the viewer: When you see Sparks's work or, to bring in another example, Kelley Walker's race-riot pictures, do you think about the person or situation being depicted or do you think of Richter and Warhol?