John Gossage

John Gossage is an artist who makes history present in photographs. He photographs places and sites that tell an everyday story: paths worn through abandoned tracts of land, corners where debris collects, markings on a wall, a table after a meal. Gossage photographs that which has just occurred to remind us that we may have already forgotten it happened or that we were there. By asking us to look at what we have misplaced or abandoned, he brings us face to face with the present as it becomes history. Throughout the 1980s, Berlin became Gossage's overriding focus. With its Wall, forgotten tracts of land, unwanted histories - both forgotten and remembered - Berlin became the place where Gossage discovered the ideas that have come to mark his personalized style of photographic storytelling. The art from this period is arguable his most important and has unquestionable influenced all his subsequent work.