Gerhard Steidl Receives Outstanding Contribution to Photography Award 2020 at the Sony World Photography Awards

Portrait by Andrea Blanch

Gerhard Steidl, an accomplished publisher and printer, is a recipient of the Outstanding Contribution to Photography 2020 award at the Sony World Photography Awards. Steidl will be honoured at the Awards’ ceremony in London on 16 April for his work with photographers and the significant impact of his photobooks. Here is an excerpt from our interview with Steidl from our Issue No. 9 - Temptation.

Gerhard Steidl: I would like to start with a complaint: it is harder and harder to find young photographers who have a concept for their work. A lifetime’s concept. Today, photography is mostly driven by the art market. Because whatever you have in a gallery show can be sold the same day, it doesn’t really matter if the artist is young or old, or if they are known or unknown. Everything that can be sold will be sold. For a younger artist it is more important to have an exhibition, have one’s foot in the art market and sell the book, than it is to make a concept for a lifetime’s work. When I receive submissions from younger photographers, it’s mostly things like photographing chairs in Tokyo, and they want to make a book out of it. Then the next year they send a prototype of, say, trees in Germany and want to make a book out of it. There isn’t really a connection from one work to the next. When I select what is good for a photo book, I select that which I would find interesting to learn. When I start with a photographer it doesn’t matter if they are young or established. I put myself in the position of a student. The artist is a professor, and the professor is educating me by doing the work. When I do a book, I’m not doing it for somebody who will buy it later. I’m not doing it for the market. I’m doing it for the artist and for me. The first priority is the artist because they are the work-givers. Without an artist, I am nothing. I have nothing to process, I have nothing to layout, and I have nothing to print. I have to be thankful that there is someone who is giving me intellectual content. I can then deliver my know-how as a technician. As a technician I have to learn from the artist what’s behind what I see, then the work begins. 

Andrea Blanch: Is there any project that you want to do that you have not done? 

Of course. There have been some artists I was always looking to work with. One of my heroes is Robert Adams. We are starting to reprint all of his books now, so everything that is out of print, will be released in a new way and new books will be done. So, I have realized what I was looking for. I wanted to work with him, and now I do. Or Andreas Gursky, whose work is extraordinary. We started our collaboration two years ago. We are not working on something for a gallery, or museum exhibition. We are just thinking and doing tests for options to present his photography in a more contemporary, modern way on paper. In approximately two years from now we will have something that we can present. In the end the project will take approximately five years of thought and tests. It was always my dream to work with Gursky. I had to learn and understand what is behind his ideas, and the moment I did, I was coming up with ideas for a physical realization. He liked the ideas, so we are working on it. 

Click here to read the full interview in Issue 9: Temptation.