I nominate graphic designer Hans Gremmen for his projects dealing with the representation of photography. His work is effective because of his great sensitivity to contemporary developments in photography.

The digitisation of information has changed the discipline. Many more photographs are taken today than ever before, and thanks to new technologies, machines like mobile telephones and services like Google Street View have expanded the number of sources of photo production. These developments have also changed the representation of photography, i.e., how photos are displayed. Along with prints and books, we now have projections, monitors, inkjet prints, and databases. Today’s viewers are familiar with phenomena like thumbnails, web albums and tags. At the same time, those viewers have changed from passive receivers of information to active “users” and are demanding more of a role in the communication process. In his designs for photo books, catalogues and exhibitions and in his independent projects, Hans Gremmen demonstrates time and again that he has a keen sense of the contemporary meaning of photography and its representation and can translate it into powerful new forms. His work continues in the tradition of the Dutch photo book, which boasts great photographers like Oorthuys, Van der Elsken and Van Kesteren as well as great graphic designers like Schrofer, Beeke, and Mevis & Van Deursen.

Gremmen’s designs are characterised by a casual clarity. The photo books ‘City People’ (2011), ‘Commonness’ (2010), ‘Garage’ (2010) and ‘Utopia/Blow Up’ (2010) and the catalogue ‘Quickscan’ (2010) are well-made objects with straightforward typography and a well-thought-out but not overdone materialisation. The photographs’ placement is to the point, appropriate and not unnecessarily emphasised. Gremmen’s design work for the magazine Fw:, in which he explores the implications of the ways photography is represented, merits special mention. Thus, in Fw: 9: ‘Off the Wall’, he documents several photo exhibitions with shots of the works on display in which the backgrounds are left out. The works are shown in perspective, distorted on the white background of the page. Here, the designer has found a form that strikes a balance between exhibition and publication and at the same time questions both.

‘Fake Flowers in Full Colour’ (2008-2009), a collaborative project with Jaap Scheeren, is a study in translating photography into full-colour printing. It is a three-dimensional color separation based on a still life of flowers reconstructed in the four printer’s colours, cyan, yellow, magenta and black.

A recent independent project of Gremmen’s, ‘The Mother Road’ (2011), is a film about Route 66 in the USA made out of a sequence of Google Street View images. It is a project in the tradition of the photography of typologies.

Hans Gremmen’s designs are of a high quality: they are clear and well executed, and their effectiveness is enhanced by a fine sense of contemporary happenings in photography and graphic design. His work thus continues a Dutch tradition and truly advances it a step further.

Credits
In cooperation with: Jaap Scheeren, Heidi de Gier, Jan Adriaans, Dieuwertje Komen, Ringel Goslinga, Petra Stavast, Karin Krijgsman, and the Nederlands Fotomuseum