The wide horizon of the prairie on which the sun sets, galloping horses, and laid-back cowboys swinging lassos. These are the images that lend the myth of America visual form, make it both visible as well as palpable. Unlike hardly any other contemporary artist, the photographer Dieter Blum (*1936 in Esslingen) has dealt with, updated, and scrutinized this subject. The sixty photographs in the series Cowboys, which were taken in 1992 for Marlboro, testify to this and are being assembled for the first time in their entirety in this exhibition catalogue. The topos of the “lonesome cowboy” is ruptured in a humorous way and replaced by a “worker” who pursues everyday activities in a team—stands at the bar, reads the newspaper, washes laundry, skies, takes a bath. An enchanting story that converts fiction into fact, myth into reality, and deconstructs them.
Texts by Friederike Horstmann, Renate Wiehager
ISBN 978-3-7757-4166-8
