Text by Val Williams

When Albrecht Tübke began to photograph people he encountered in the cities of Europe and the USA, he became part of a long tradition of documentary portraiture. Like his illustrious forebear August Sander, and more recent practitioners such as Judith Joy Ross and Rineke Dijkstra, Tübke has a gift for allowing his subjects to perform in their own solitary drama. “Many people”, he writes, “try to hide their emotions and feelings as they go about everyday life. This public persona is often calculated to mask what is within, creating a veneer of individuality, a fabrication to hide behind.” In ”Citizens”, Tübke has created, from real life, a cast of characters who play their parts in the urban drama. All of the people he has photographed pose in the same way, directly facing the camera, in front of a background of concrete or stained brick wall. A man in an oversized blazer and a paisley scarf, a woman in a white tracksuit, a middle-aged red head in a cerise mac, and urban cowboy, a dark haired woman with a vintage suitcase, a dishevelled man with a shopping bag. These are people with their own secrets, joys; anxieties, dreads and anticipations, but we can only wonder as to what they are. Tübke’s photographs are cool and beautiful enough to be fashion images, a studied reflection of street style, but in the end, this is belied by the democracy of their vision.

Looking through these photographs, it is difficult to detect an underlying agenda. This is not a search for “types” or a Sanderesque study of society. There are no judgements made in these photographs, no division made in the ways in which the old and the young are studied. Perhaps most obviously, there are no extremes -however different they are from each other, Tübke’s subjects are all in control of their urban environment; they stand confidently, hands on hips, confronting the camera, playing their part in these subtly and carefully choreographed scenarios. But, democratic as Tübke’s vision may seem at first sight, closer examination of the photographs reveals that, in his search for “ordinariness” the quotidian of the urban experience, he has selected (from the thousands of people he has surveyed) men and women who have an undeniable sense of presence. There is, without a doubt, something strange and mysterious about all the “Citizens” who Tübke has photographed. It is as if they have cast themselves in some unknown drama of the urban, assembled their outfits that morning as if they knew that they would, that day, be stars. A young man in an artfully baggy suit, dark shirt and narrow patterned tie, rucksack slung carelessly across his shoulder, becomes the epitome of how young city dwellers see themselves, dandies in the concrete, 21st century flaneurs. But Tübke is adept at both suggesting and then refuting such simple suggestions-another young man, rumpled and gawky, tie askew and hands held awkwardly by his side, hairstyle outdated, anxious even at the thought of being photographed, proves that our dearly cherished myths about the city exist to be challenged, and, ultimately, refuted. But Tübke views both young men with equivalence-neither has more value than the other in this eerie grey landscape; they are all “Citizens”.

You can find more of Albrecht Tübke’s work here.

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