Text in English & German. When at the end of the 1960s Michael Nether set out for Berlin, that city held enormous attraction for young intellectuals and artists, just as it had done in the Roaring Twenties. There were demonstrations and happenings, there was Kommune 1 with Rainer Langhans and Uschi Obermeier, and everywhere people held endless discussions that continued throughout the night. Scandalous theatrical performances and legendary concerts with musicians such as Bob Dylan, Mick Jagger, Leonard Cohen and George Moustaki gave expression to a new sensibility. And then there was Klaus Kinski, in his unforgettable performance of Jesus Christ and other one-man shows. Nether photographed what he saw face to face -- 'on stage' -- including stars of international cinema like Claudia Cardinale, Roman Polanski, Peter Ustinov or Pier Paolo Pasolini. One of his first photos was the scene of a 1969 student demonstration at the Berlin Gedachtniskirche. Crowds of people throng the streets observed by countless curious passersby, and the police are there with their vans. The composition of the picture can hardly have happened by chance. Cars and the facades of buildings are points of reference past which people wind like a huge serpent. At the centre top of the picture there is a bright light. The photo sums up the atmosphere of departure and the state of mind of an entire generation. Here Nether demonstrates that he is an articulate documentary photographer. Towards the end of the 1970s, Nether returned to his home region of Swabia. Here he went into business with a partner, worked for advertising agencies -- for instance, taking photographs for Porsche in the company's research and development centre in Weissach -- but he also gradually made a name for himself as a photographic artist, with his own gallery in Bietigheim-Bissingen; particularly noteworthy were his pictures of prominent celebrities such as Wolf Biermann, Martin Walser, Woody Allen or Helmut Newton, as well as numerous photos of performances by the Stuttgart Ballet, but also of "street people". He succeeds in subtly communicating with the latter in these photos and making this dialogue visible. Today his main interest focuses on photographing portraits and nudes. In 2009 the International Center of Photography in New York purchased 100 photographs by Nether.

With his new book of photographs, Migration as Avant-Garde, Michael Danner delivers a moving, critical, and thought-provoking contribution to the current public debate on immigration. He skillfully combines his own photos and texts with historic images, and the result is a coherent and multifaceted narrative of the immigrant experience. Danner has photographed the people who migrate from their homes, but also "those that influence, prevent, channel, or impact a migrant's humanity," including border police and agents of the state. In addition to these portraits, his book includes archival images of refugees and satellite imagery from crisis regions. Quotes from Hannah Arendt's 1943 essay We Refugees, which was also the inspiration for the title, are interspersed through the book. The events that Arendt wrote about more than seventy years ago - giving up one's home, one's friends, family, and language - are more pressing today than ever before. In search of progress, driven by the desire for a better future, and risking their lives, people both then and now hit the road, break through physical and psychological boundaries, and thus provide our society with new perspectives and ways of thinking.