MADE IN GERMANY

16 Philine von Sell shows the forms and objects that workers pro duce, and the sites that they affect. Yet she does so only as an exception, much as labor by hand is the exception rather than the rule. Von Sell is not interested in portraits, faces, gestures, or attitudes at work, but rather in the depiction of contexts of work, and in the technological and organizational conditions of factories. Her photography corresponds to the reality of work today. Humans are still irreplaceable, since it is not yet close to possible to replace human ability, intelligence, and fine motor skills with machines; yet the number of humans required for a given quantity of production is lower now than at any prior epoch in history. Though humans are still eminently important for pro duction, they have in fact become an ephemeral quantity—which is reflected in Made in Germany. On the other hand, when work- ers do appear, in a small number of photographs, they are at the center of the action, with the photographer presenting the inter play of their activities with machines and objects. The potter’s wheels at Villeroy & Boch stand empty, yet it is clear that crea tive artisanal work is done at these workstations. What is more, the clear and balanced tectonics of von Sell’s photographs speak in a clear language, and define the quality of her images. Her compositions bring into view organizational concepts and work systems that are indispensable for the achieve ment of the high daily standard of production worthy of the seal “Made in Germany.” “It is not only a matter of high performance, but of high performance sustained—of guaranteeing perma nently high performance and quality. That is something excep tional—and that is what I associate with the term ‘Made in Germany,’” says von Sell. She goes on: “Everything has a soul— not only people, but things, too, have their honor.” Indeed, this formulation may have been fundamental to Made in Germany, but in today’s globalized industry modern design concepts that emphasize the ongoing development and improvement of pro duction and of products are most important. Design involves goods and their prices. Functionality and functioning are key, and it is precisely these aspects that are two of the great strengths of German industrial goods. The artistic gaze trans forms this fact through subjective observation—which seems necessary to get a look into contemporary industrial activities at all; after all, as consumers we are familiar with goods, but not very familiar with how they are produced. But it is also true that the boundaries between design and art are now being erased, such that areas of overlap exist between the two realms. This does not necessarily mean that our entire reality has been artistically shaped. There may be, however, a still-hidden issue here for Modernism and its suc cessors, an issue not yet fully grasped, still half-conscious. Only time will tell us more. It may be that one of the last, if one of the greatest, utopias is illuminating our path out of the Modernism of the twentieth century into the present. To have recognized this methodologically, and to have realized it through photography, is the achievement of Philine von Sell, who has made her per sonal way of seeing the point of departure for the major inquiry that is Made in Germany. 1 Ingeborg Güssow, “Die neusachliche Photographie,” in Kunst und Technik in den 20er Jahren. Neue Sachlichkeit und gegenständlicher Konstruktivismus, exh. cat. Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus (Munich, 1980), pp. 97–98.

MADE IN GERMANY

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