By Ron Jude
Published in Aperture Photobook Review 006, Spring 2014
I was introduced to Joachim Brohm’s work in the early 1990s through the Museum Folkwang catalog Industriezeit. It was given to me as a gift. At the time, I had never seen anything quite like it. The images are coarse and stubbornly enigmatic, and the book design is blunt, yet elegant in its understatement. I had a very visceral and profound reaction to this book when I first saw it. It was one of the first times I encountered pictures in a book without having the desire to see the “real” work, in the form of prints or an exhibition.
The photographs consist of industrial landscapes and strange, small-‐scale dioramas, depicting what appear to be workers in a refinery, or some other type of heavy industry. (A gas mask worn by one figure implicitly suggests other, darker narrative possibilities.) The shallow focus of the close-‐up diorama images is echoed by the compressed space of a long lens in the landscape photographs. The color is washed out and many of the horizon lines are cut off. The images are simultaneously disorienting and matter-‐of-‐fact. Through simple photographic phenomena, Brohm immerses us in a confounding psychological space that makes me slightly nauseous.
After
hundreds
of
viewings
over
twenty
years,
my
copy
of
Industriezeit
is
well-‐worn.
I
still
don’t
know
much
about
the
work
or
its
origins.
(The
catalog’s
essay
is
in
German,
which
is
a
convenient
excuse
for
me
not
to
read
it.)
I
now
know
Joachim
personally
and
I
could
easily
ask
him
to
unlock
its
mysteries,
but
that
would
risk
loosening
the
book’s
hold
on
me.
It
is
at
the
core
of
a
small
handful
of
publications
that
I
constantly
reference,
as
a
reminder
of
what
sort
of
photographer
I
want
to
be,
and
what
sort
of
books
I
want
to
make.
After
all
these
years,
Industriezeit
still
leaves
me
a
bit
unsettled
when
I
pull
it
off
the
shelf.
It
is
perfect
in
that
regard.
