Jan Dibbets, the Photographic Work

Erik Verhagen

The first monograph covering Dibbets's iconic photographic oeuvre. Dutchman Jan Dibbets (b. 1941) is one of the principal artists to have introduced photography into the plastic arts, and this as early as the 1960s. At a time when photography has massively invaded contemporary art institutions - not without generating confusion and excess - it is not easy to evaluate the full radicality of Dibbets's approach. This radicalism has nothing to do with modernist overkill. Dibbets did not merely go further than others; rather, he simply went 'elsewhere'. Beginning in 1967, he embarked on a long-range project which, as we advance into the 21st century, he seems not to have abandoned: the 'pictorializing' of photography. Jan Dibbets is one of the few artists of his generation and reputation not to have seen his oeuvre accorded full monographic coverage. This exhaustive study seeks to fill...