Gottfried Jäger was born in 1937 in Burg, near Magdeburg, Germany. He trained and worked as commercial photographer and studied photo-engineering in Cologne. In 1960 he became Lecturer in photo technology at Academy of Applied Art (Werkkunstschule) Bielefeld. From 1972 to 2002 he taught photo art and design at University of Applied Sciences (Fachhochschule) Bielefeld. He coined and established the term “generative photography” in 1968 with a group exhibition. He received his PhD in art and music from University of Bielefeld with a thesis on the Bielefeld microphoto artist Carl Strüwe (1898–1988).