[fore-words]
by David Brittain + Bob Jardine

Ohio was founded in 1995 as a collaboration between the artists Hans-Peter Feldmann, Uschi Huber, Jorg Paul Janka and Stefan Schneider. Issue #1 announced itself as "guaranteed free of text". It was agreed that images, whatever their source, would appear without the support of critique or comment. The title was chosen because it is meaningless in a photographic context. Each publication is a unique portable artwork. This retrospective was the first exhibition of Ohio in the UK, and the world premiere of issue #13, published in DVD format.

The first six issues were produced as a magazine in printed form. But after 1998, when Feldmann and Schneider left to pursue separate projects, Huber and Janka broadened the project to include video editions. Each issue is accompanied by an exhibition in a street vitrine in Cologne - "open 24 hours a day".

Ohio re-presents work from diverse sources, without regard for the usual genres of photography and without any editorial text or critical analysis. In this respect, although Huber and Janka call themselves editors, the project is aligned with curatorial practice. They describe Ohio as a "photo magazine", but in contrast to most photography titles, it is not concerned with "high culture". Instead of portfolios of master photographers, the magazine contains material culled from a wide range of still and moving images - amateur collections, commercial, civic and scientific archives, advertising, porn, film stills, news media and the internet. All kinds of images are grist to their mill and up for grabs.

Since 1998, Huber and Janka have made Ohio more network-oriented. In July 2004 they produced their most ambitious exhibition yet for the Kunstverein in Düsseldorf. The installation of e.V. [an abbreviation of the German term for a small non-profit club or society] re-presented images by literally hundreds of such anonymous producers. Issue #12 is an edited version of e.V.

One of the aims of Ohio is to allow images to be read in a "new and more open way". At first sight, it seems designed to frustrate every expectation about how photographs are meant to operate within the pages of a magazine. Without text and ill-equipped with signposts or clues, Ohio is largely unreadable, especially for those who demand that art magazines reinforce their prejudices.
Ohio's stern negations and maddening inversions of conventional editorial practice are revealed to be aesthetic experiences produced especially for the magazine's fans. They are invited to participate in a playful and ever-evolving critique of what passes for "official culture".

As an art project, Ohio publications and exhibitions resist categorisation because they favour untutored producers over validated artists. Refreshingly witty and mischievous, yet without any obvious irony, Ohio shows great respect towards its contributors, treating them as artistic equals. To achieve this uncynically is an impressive feat. In this respect the complex practice of Huber and Janka alludes to the "everyone an artist" programme of Fluxus and Joseph Beuys.