OHIO

Düsseldorf, 1995: Turning a Magazine into an Exhibition Space for Photography

OHIO was launched in January 1995. Its official site describes it as an “art project in magazine form” and as a mobile exhibition space for photographic images^*1 arthistoricum.net identifies Uschi Huber and Jörg Paul Janka as its principal editors and records the early participation of Stefan Schneider and Hans-Peter Feldmann^*2 C/O Berlin likewise lists Feldmann as a cofounder from 1995 to 1998^*10 The four early editors incorporated the acts of finding, extracting, sequencing, and distributing existing photographs into the artistic process itself.

A photographic-history resource from the City of Düsseldorf also includes Ohio Photomagazine #1 (1995), by Hans-Peter Feldmann, Uschi Huber, Jörg Paul Janka, and Stefan Schneider, as an example of photographic practice in the city^*22.

Janka’s biography records his studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Bernd Becher, known for typological photographs of industrial architecture made under consistent conditions, as well as his attendance at a 1991 Ruhr University lecture by media theorist Vilém Flusser, whose work addressed photography and technical images^*23 The editors of OHIO therefore brought together backgrounds in photographic education and media theory.

Another artist profile for Janka documents work across media art, installation, and moving image, reinforcing the extent to which OHIO exceeded the category of a specialist magazine devoted only to photography^*24.

MACBA catalogs OHIO as a serial publication begun in 1995 and records the four early editors^*3 The Rijksmuseum Research Library also preserves it as a publication begun that year^*11 OHIO does not separate the print hanging on a museum wall from photographs reproduced in newspapers, magazines, advertisements, albums, and photocopies. It makes the latter forms of circulation into the site of production.

OHIO was not an isolated magazine experiment. Camera Austria’s 1995 issue The Archive, which included Feldmann, reflected a wider discussion of photography through collection, documentation, and archives rather than through individual works alone^*25 Eye Magazine likewise discusses FOUND, Useful Photography, OHIO, and related publications as part of a broader tendency to reedit existing photographs through publishing^*8 In a visual culture already saturated with photographs, selection and recirculation had themselves become artistic problems.

Looking at Circulated Photographs before Looking for an Author

OHIO centers on how existing photographs are seen rather than on the production of new subjects. Media Art Net describes Huber and Janka, together with Schneider and Feldmann, as presenting “found images” discovered in streets, printed matter, and private material^*6 Camera Austria similarly discusses Feldmann’s work with OHIO and other publications as an inquiry into the social, political, and aesthetic functions of photographic images^*9 Feldmann’s individual method cannot stand in for the project as a whole, but the early editors shared an interest in retrieving existing visual material.

Ciel variable discusses Feldmann’s publications in terms of presenting series of images gathered from non-art sources without commentary^*17 303 Gallery likewise describes textless publications such as Ohio and Cahier des images as part of his use of repetition and sequencing to leave meaning-making to the viewer^*18 With OHIO, selection by several editors becomes especially important. The project is less concerned with reconstructing the photographer’s intention than with what remains—and what newly becomes visible—when a photograph is moved elsewhere.

Removing Captions and Producing Meaning through Editing

arthistoricum.net describes OHIO as arranging private photographs, archival material, and images from digital environments largely without explanatory text^*2 Removing captions does not remove editing; adjacency creates new comparisons. This is closely related to the official site’s stated interest in photography’s reproducible, everyday character rather than the “aura” of a single photograph^*1 In a magazine, the order in which pages are turned becomes part of the work’s structure.

Input Party also describes OHIO as a “mobile exhibition space” for photographic images^*16 Pages, spreads, and inserts perform a role comparable to the arrangement of works on gallery walls. As authorship information recedes, editorial decisions about what to retain and what to place beside it become more pronounced, raising the question of how meaning is divided between photographer and editor.

Beyond Anonymous Photographs: Artist Images and Everyday Photographs on the Same Page

Understanding OHIO simply as a magazine of anonymous found photographs misses its instability. In a discussion of publishing cultures around found photography, Eye Magazine notes that OHIO includes not only everyday and preexisting images, but also photographs by named figures within art and fashion such as Craig McDean and Andreas Gursky^*8 On the page, family photograph, advertisement, and artwork do not begin as fixed categories; they appear side by side as reproduced images.

This mixture also resists a simple opposition in which anonymity is treated as authenticity and a named artist guarantees artistic value. A Frieze review of Feldmann argues that his collecting and archival work unsettles assumptions that what is abundant is disposable or that what is inexpensive lacks value^*19 In OHIO, that judgment takes place page by page. The difference between first seeing a photograph without knowing its origin and later learning who made it turns the artistic status of the photograph itself into a question.

Issues 1–6: Changing Formats, Inserts, and Records

MACBA’s Ohio, núm. 1 is the first issue from 1995, and the publication itself has entered the museum collection as an artwork or collection object^*4 Ohio, núm. 3 is likewise held as one issue of the serial publication, allowing OHIO to be understood as a cumulative form that develops issue by issue^*5 The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam holds issues 1 through 6 as a group, preserving the continuity of editing and publication as a body of work within the museum^*15.

The Van Abbemuseum library record describes the second issue from 1995 as a periodical edited by Uschi Huber, Stefan Schneider, Hans-Peter Feldmann, and Jörg Paul Janka that repurposes existing photographs without text^*21 The same record notes that the issue was published in connection with the Ohio exhibition at Museum Castle Hardenberg that year, showing that magazine and exhibition were intertwined from the beginning.

The early issues did not follow a fixed specification. Stroom Den Haag notes that issues 1 through 6 vary in format and page count and that issue 6 included a record by Red Krayola^*14 Specific Object likewise records the same six issues as a boxed set of magazines with varying specifications^*13 The category of the “photography magazine” itself never settles into a fixed format.

From Paper to Video and Boxes: Refusing a Fixed Magazine Format

The detailed bibliography at Centre des livres d’artistes traces OHIO’s changes in paper, color and black-and-white printing, inserts, moving-image media, and other features from issue to issue^*12 Beginning as bundles of photographs, later issues expand into DVDs, supplementary booklets, and boxes containing multiple photographic prints. This is not a narrative of photography progressing from paper to moving image. Across changing media, the editorial logic remains consistent: gather multiple images, give them an order and a container, and place them before the reader again.

This also explains why OHIO is difficult to summarize through a single representative photograph. The relevant object in a museum is the issue as a whole: spreads, inserts, boxes, and differences from one issue to the next. The preservation of the first six issues as sets in museums and research libraries shows that the unit of photographic history can include the structure of a publication as well as an individual print^*11.

How OHIO Differs from Useful Photography: Unstable Status over “Useful” Images

The Photographers’ Gallery’s Found, Shared: The Magazine Photowork presented OHIO alongside Useful Photography and Found Magazine as publications that reposition existing photographs through print^*7 The grouping places OHIO within a history of found-photography publishing, while the selection criteria of the different magazines remain distinct.

Useful Photography’s official description defines it as an annual publication collecting and editing photographs originally made for “useful” purposes that would otherwise often be overlooked^*20 OHIO is not limited to that category of use. It moves across private photographs, archives, digitally found images, and photographs by established artists. Its emphasis therefore extends beyond discovering beauty in anonymous utilitarian photographs. Through editing, the status of an image—its authorship, use, and artistic value—is temporarily suspended and reconsidered through a different sequence.

This publication-centered method also appeared at Manifesta 4 in Frankfurt in 2002. Alongside OHIO Photomagazine, the exhibition included Oliver Musovik, Bruno Serralongue, Revolver Archiv für aktuelle Kunst, and other practices that extended photography, documentation, publishing, and research beyond the isolated artwork^*26 The difficulty of deciding whether OHIO is a magazine or an artwork is itself part of the historical situation in which photography’s sites of display expanded into pages, archives, and distribution networks.

The Appeal of Found Photography and Questions of Ownership and Privacy

The reuse of found photographs brings ethical friction alongside its visual appeal. An Eye Magazine essay notes that moving found images into new contexts inevitably raises questions of privacy, ownership, and permission^*8 OHIO’s scarcity of explanatory text loosens the reader from established categories, but it can also obscure the original circumstances of a photograph and the situation of its subject. Removing context is therefore not a neutral operation; it requires attention to what is lost and to who acquires the power to give the edited image a new meaning.

In OHIO, selection, sequencing, reproduction, and distribution after exposure all participate in making photographic meaning. MACBA’s registration of the project as a serial publication supports a view in which adjacency on the page and the circulation and preservation of successive issues belong to the unit of the work^*3 A photograph’s meaning is not fixed at the moment the shutter is released. It changes as the image is found, reproduced, placed beside other images, and delivered to readers.