Exhibition: ‘August Sander’s People of the 20th Century’ at the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT, Part 2

“I feel the heavy weight of history permeating Sander’s almost melancholy portraits, portraits that emanate from a generations long uncertain cultural landscape.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 27th February - 28th June, 2026

Curator: Judy Ditner, the Richard Benson Curator of Photography and Digital Media

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Painter [Heinrich Hoerle]
1928, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 7/8 in. (25.9 x 20cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Heinrich Hoerle (1 September 1895 – 7 July 1936) was a German constructivist artist of the New Objectivity movement.

Generations

There have been so many words written about one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, August Sander (German, 1876-1964), his magnum opus People of the 20th Century (Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts) (1892-1954) – which consists of over 600 photographs organised into seven categories and 49 portfolios – and his influence on social realist photographers such as Walker Evans and Dorothea Lange, and the later typologies of conceptual photographers such as Bernd and Hiller Becher … what else is there left to say?

We know of his use of an “old fashioned” large-format camera, tripod, glass negatives and long exposure times used for the crispness and detail obtainable in the final print. We observe the many scenarios in which Sander took his photographs, from staged studio portraits, to seemingly impromptu photographs “on the road”, from closely cropped portraits, to medium distance group photos, to group photographs out in the Westwald or the Eifel or basket weavers embedded in the landscape. From low depth of field to high depth of field. From seriously “dead pan” to romantically engaged. We know of the influence of New Objectivity (known in German as Neue Sachlichkeit) on his frontal, unsentimental, realist portraits – his fascinating cast of personages, characters modulating the personal into universal typologies: the farmer, the skilled tradesman, the woman, the artists, etc… character templates that picture archetypes in German history.

All this is known and given. What else can be said?

Personally I feel the heavy weight of history permeating Sander’s almost melancholy portraits, portraits that emanate from a generations long uncertain cultural landscape:

~ The photographs from 1912-1913 in the first posting on this exhibition, such as Farmer Couple – Propriety and Harmony (1912, printed c. 1990-1999), Country Band (1913, printed c. 1990-1999), Country Lads from the Westerwald (1912, printed c. 1990-1999), and Farm Children (c. 1913, printed c. 1990-1999) emerge from a society facing “significant social and political unrest prior to World War I, driven by rigid class hierarchies, rapid industrialisation, and a growing labour movement. The landed aristocracy held significant political power, which bred resentment among the working and middle classes.”

In these four photographs by Sander we have an elderly farmer couple of propriety and harmony facing the prospect of old age and experiencing severe, devastating food shortages during World War I as conscription of agricultural workers and the requisitioning of draft horses for the Imperial German Army paralysed domestic food production, poor harvests and harsh winters further eroding the civilian diet, and inflation making even basic items unaffordable for many (the government taking away or strictly controlling the food produced by farmers during the war) – while the young men in the country band and country lads from the Westerwald would have become machine gun fodder on the fields of Europe.

The children would have had to live through this. The Burgfrieden (civil truce) which had brought political unity and the cessation of strikes at the beginning of the war fell apart during it.1 Revolution in 1918 led to “the downfall of the House of Hohenzollern, the dissolution of the German army, and the demise of the old German social order.”2 General Erich Ludendorff, defacto military commander resigned in October 1918; Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated in November 1918; Prince Max of Baden Chancellor of Germany resigned in November 1918; and King Ludwig III of Bavaria was overthrown in November 1918. Shootings and murders were the order of the day in Berlin.

“In November 1918 … the old regime of Kaiser Wilhelm II was swept away by a revolution. It ended the First World War and led to the establishment of democracy in Germany. The Weimar Republic was born out of the struggle for a new social order and political system.”3

Tumultuous times.

From the outset the new Weimar Republic was always under pressure as the cabaret of cultural life continued its unstable rollercoaster of protests, strikes, murders and social and political upheaval during the interwar years.

“During the interwar years, Germany experienced frequent, deadly street battles between communists and right-wing groups, which bordered on low-intensity civil war:

~ Following World War I, communist uprisings – such as the 1919 Spartacist Uprising in Berlin – were brutally suppressed by far-right volunteer paramilitaries known as the Freikorps.

~ Both sides formed official, heavily armed paramilitary wings. The Communist Party (KPD) utilised the Red Front Fighters’ League (Roter Frontkämpferbund or RFB). Their primary right-wing antagonists were the Nazi Party’s Stormtroopers (Sturmabteilung or SA), alongside the nationalist Stahlhelm and the Social Democratic Reichsbanner.

~ Violence peaked as the Weimar Republic collapsed. Nazi paramilitaries regularly marched directly into working-class, communist strongholds (such as the Wedding and Neukölln districts in Berlin) to intentionally spark brawls. Clashes escalated from brawls to armed gunfire, claiming hundreds of lives on both sides.” (multiple sources)

The great Wall Street Crash of 1929 ramped up the instability, causing severe economic depression in Germany and rampant inflation. “Millions of Germans faced severe hunger and malnutrition because the economic collapse left them without the income to buy food.” This was the era of political violence in Germany (1918-1933) before the fall of the Weimar Republic (1930-1933) when the expansive creativity of artists, the small, hard won civil liberties and the sense of liberal freedom were all swept away by the Nazis in the 1930s.

Tumultuous times.

NOW

You look at the photographs by Sander of human beings from the interwar years and you overlay this knowledge onto them and a kind of melancholy realism descends on you as you appreciate the import of historic events that they were caught up in, the maelstrom, malevolence and disaster of the Second World War that was quickly approaching.

I think of the farm children photographed in 1913 – in 1939 they will be in their thirties and will, most likely, be serving in the German armed forces during the second conflagration. I look at the Peddler (1930, printed c. 1990-1999 below) and the Itinerant Mason (c. 1927, printed c. 1990-1999) and wonder what they did during the war and whether they survived it. I flinch looking at the “Aryan” doppelgängers in Farmers Playing Cards (c. 1920, printed c. 1990-1999) as I imagine them in SS uniforms. And I look at the men in Workers’ Council from the Ruhr Region (1929, printed c. 1990-1999 below) and wonder whether they were later pressed into the army or, perhaps, the Volkssturm (national militia) at the end of the Second World War made up of the young, the injured, the old, to defend the Fatherland from the Russians. To refuse the call invited execution.

I wonder about the Country Girls, Westerwald (1925, printed c. 1990-1999) and how many babies they produced for the Reich and what medals they received. I think about the black man in Circus Performers (1926-1932, printed c. 1990-1999). I think about the persecuted, the Jews and the political prisoners including Sander’s son Political Prisoner [Erich Sander] (1941-1944, printed c. 1990-1999 below) “who was a member of the left wing Socialist Workers’ Party (SAP), was arrested by Nazis in 1934 and sentenced to 10 years in prison, where he died of an untreated ruptured appendix in 1944” (Wikipedia) because the guards couldn’t care less … and I imagine the pain and heartache that his father August went through at the time, loosing his eldest son.

I gaze at the faces of The Last People, the stare of an Inmate of an Asylum (1926-1930, printed c. 1990-1999) and the faces of Blind Children (c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999) and wonder whether they were all killed as part of the Nazis euthanasia program (code-named Aktion T4) “which was a systematic campaign of mass murder that targeted institutionalised people with physical and intellectual disabilities in Germany and annexed territories (between 1939-1945).”4

A tear rolls down my cheek.

And then you think of the persecution of Sander himself, the destruction in 1936 of all the publishers copies of his first book Face of Our Time (Antlitz der Zeit), published in 1929, the destruction of the printing plates and the confiscation of his negatives – because the portrayal of all strata of German society did not fit with right wing eugenics and defied the regime’s rigid ideology of the “master race”.

Finally, I think of the courage of Sander to keep on photographing, to keep on recording his people of the 20th century no matter who they were, no matter the peril he was in. What else could he do? Give in to oppression? To survive the vicissitudes of the Second World War only then to loose 25,000 to 30,000 of his negatives, part of his life’s work, destroyed in an accidental basement fire in Cologne in 1946.

AND NOBODY SAYS ANY OF THIS.

But in his photographs we can see and feel how …

“The faces of those he photographed show traces of this collective historical experience.”

Through the generations.

As I observed in a 2013 paper Transgressive Topographies, Subversive Photographies, Cultural Policies, “Photography has always opened up to artists the possibility of offering the viewer images open to interpretation, where the constructed personal narratives of the viewer are mediated through mappings of identity, body and place that challenge how the viewer sees the world and the belief systems that sustain that view.”5

Thus, we are trans/fixed (trans, derived from Latin, “trans-” means to go across, beyond, or through) by the photographs of August Sander, for in understanding their history and their gestures (the hands of the blind children, the outstretched arm of the farmer sowing), their behaviour, social interactions, and psychological tension6 we may go beyond the here and now, transcending a belief system that sustains a limited world view, embracing identities that are constantly shifting and evolving. In this way, Sander’s photographs change human consciousness.

They undermine Volksgemeinschaft, a German term translating to “people’s community” or “national community”,7 a central ideological concept in Nazi Germany used to describe a supposedly classless, racially unified society where the interests of the individual were strictly subordinated to the needs of the nation … for within the archetype there is always the individual, choice, difference, freedom of expression, freedom to say no. Enough. No matter what the cost.

Through individual and archetype, gesture and pose, Sander’s art becomes impervious to time, a guiding light for generations.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

For more information on August Sander please see my text A portent of things to come… on ‘Germany / 1920s / New Objectivity / August Sander’, August 7, 2022. See Part 1 of the posting on this exhibition.

Footnotes

1/ “The right saw the Burgfrieden as a sign of support for the authoritarian state while the left expected their sacrifices to be rewarded by social changes after the end of the war.”

Anonymous. “Burgfriedenspolitik,” on the Wikipedia website Nd [Oline] Cited 18/06/2026

2/ Harry Graf Kessler, diary entry from November 9, 1918

3/ Text from the catalogue to the exhibition Berlin in the revolution 1918/19. Verlag Kettler, Kunstbibliothek Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2018

4/ Anonymous. “Aktion T4,” on the Wikipedia website Nd [Oline] Cited 18/06/2026

5/ Marcus Bunyan. “Transgressive Topographies, Subversive Photographies, Cultural Policies,” on the Art Blart website, October 2013 [Oline] Cited 16/06/2026

6/ “Identity however is constantly evolving, shifting, and even fragmenting, while gesture signals shifts in human consciousness, behaviour, social interactions, and psychological tension.”

Associate Professor James McArdle. “Entwine,” on the On This Date in Photography website 15/06/2026 [Online] Cited 16/02/2026

7/ “A central concept in Nazi ideology, “Volksgemeinschaft” (community of the People) was the name given to the fictional notion of a classless community of all “racially pure” Germans as a unified people, supposedly bound together by blood and culture as well as common experiences and beliefs. The idea of the “Volksgemeinschaft” was intended to evoke a strong identification of the majority of Germans with the Nazi regime and to promote their sense of obedience. Central was the exclusion of certain groups, such as Jews, Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, political opponents and people persecuted for being “antisocial”. They were all labelled as “aliens to the community”. Many were arrested and deported to concentration or death camps.”

Anonymous. “Volksgemeinschaft / Lit. Community of the People,” on the Bildungsportal Ns-Zwangsarbeit website Nd [Online] Cited 18/06/2026

Many thankx to the Yale University Art Gallery for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. All photographs were printed by Gerd Sander (German, 1940-2021). Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image. See Part 1 of the posting.

“The stark reminder that there was a person behind the lens, who suffered loss along with so many during that time, only makes People of the 20th Century more remarkable in its monumental intimacy. Each image is its own stunning portrait. Cumulatively, they have the power to leave the viewer in a daze, awestruck at the way someone with a clear eye and a loudly beating heart could show us how to connect with people from three generations ago…”

Brian Slattery. “Photographer Gives Everyone Their Dignity,” on the Midbrow website 30 March, 2026 [Online] Cited 03/06/2026

“Seen together, Sander’s images form a pictorial mosaic of inter-war Germany. Rapid social change and newfound freedom were accompanied by financial insecurity and social and political unrest. By photographing the citizens of the Weimar Republic – from the artistic, bohemian elite to the Nazis and those they persecuted – Sander’s photographs tell of an uncertain cultural landscape. It is a world characterized by explosions of creativity, hyperinflation and political turmoil. The faces of those he photographed show traces of this collective historical experience.

Anonymous. “Five things to know: August Sander,” on the Tate website Nd [Online] Cited 18/06/2026

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Painter [Marta Hegemann]
c. 1925, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 11/16 in. (25.7 x 19.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Marta Hegemann (14 February 1894 – 28 January 1970) was a German artist associated with the Dada movement and with the Cologne Progressives.

Cologne Progressives

The Cologne Progressives was an art movement and were an informal group of artists based in the Cologne and Düsseldorf area of Germany. They came together following the First World War and participated in the radical workers’ movement.

History

The group was founded by Gerd Arntz, Heinrich Hoerle and Franz Wilhelm Seiwert. The group related their attitude to art to their political activism. As Wieland Schmied put it, they “sought to combine constructivism and objectivity, geometry and object, the general and the particular, avant-garde conviction and political engagement, and which perhaps approximated most to the forward looking of New Objectivity […] “. They originated Figurative Constructivism.

Other artists and designers associated with this group include Wilhelm Kleinert, Marta Hegemann, Angelika Hoerle, Anton Räderscheidt, and Gottfried Brockmann. Many members had come from the Stupid (art movement).

Key concepts – Reversibility

This concept comes from their concern not merely to communicate social and political necessities, but also to ensure that their artworks could be turned toward the viewers sensible reality and become tenable as an argument. This is tied to their political commitment to proletarian culture in the specific context of the Rhineland during the tumults of the 1920s.

Text from the Wikipedia website

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Painter [Willi Bongard]
1922-1925, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 1/2 in. (25.5 x 19cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Paper Manufacturer and His Wife
1932, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 15/16 × 7 11/16 in. (25.3 × 19.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Peddler
1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.8 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Philosopher [Max Scheler]
c. 1925, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.8 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Max Ferdinand Scheler (German: [ˈʃeːlɐ]; 22 August 1874 – 19 May 1928) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. Considered in his lifetime one of the most prominent German philosophers, Scheler developed the philosophical method of Edmund Husserl, the founder of phenomenology.

The German photographer August Sander (1876-1964) is one of the most significant and influential photographers of the 20th century. This exhibition presents Sander’s ambitious and groundbreaking portrait series Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the 20th Century) (1892-1954), a canonical work in the history of photography. The presentation – of over 600 prints from the series – represents the most comprehensive installation of his life’s work.

For this monumental archive of modern humanity, Sander photographed German citizens from all classes and backgrounds, organising them into categories such as “The Skilled Tradesman,” “The Farmer,” “The Artist,” and “The Woman.” Sander conceived of the project in the 1920s, during the Weimar Republic, but included in it photographs he had made as early as 1892. His portrayal of marginalised individuals, including people with disabilities and the unemployed, provided visibility to those often excluded from mainstream representations and drew the ire of the Nazis. Striking for their unflinching realism and skilful observations of character, his images reflect the changing social landscape of Germany in the first half of the 20th century.

Text from the Yale University Art Gallery website

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Political Prisoner
1941-1944, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 7/16 x 7 3/4 in. (24 x 19.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Political Prisoner
1941-1944, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 13/16 x 7 11/16 in. (25 x 19.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Political Prisoner [Erich Sander]
1941-1944, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 7/8 x 7 3/8 in. (25.1 x 18.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Erich Sander (1903-1944) was the eldest son of Anna and August , an intellectual, political activist and member of the Resistance who was introduced to photography by his father, with whom he worked. In Cologne, with his comrade Ernst Ransenberg, he took over the leadership of the local section of the SAP party (Sozialistische Arbeiterpartei Deutschland – Socialist Workers’ Party of Germany), writing and publishing leaflets against the Nazi party in power. In 1934, Erich was arrested and sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment for high treason. He worked as a photographer for the prison administration and managed to smuggle in a camera that enabled him to take portraits of himself and his fellow prisoners, whom he managed to smuggle out of the prison. He left a substantial correspondence with his family (some letters written in secret ink), which constitutes essential documentation on life in prison during National Socialism. …

Erich Sander did not live to see the end of the war. He died on 23 March 1944, after his severe abdominal pain was ignored for days by the prison authorities.

Marie-Édith Agostini. “Portraits of a Time by August and Erich Sander,” on the Wer Ist Walter? website Nd [Online] Cited 03/06/2026. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Political Prisoner [Erich Sander]
1943, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 15/16 x 7 3/8 in. (25.3 x 18.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Political Prisoner [Marcel Ancelin]
1943, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 5/8 x 7 11/16 in. (24.5 x 19.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

One of his fellow prisoners was Marcel Ancelin, born in Paris in 1923. A member of the Front National de Lutte pour la Libération et l’Indépendance de la France (National Front for the Fight for the Liberation and Independence of France) and later the FTP (Francs-Tireurs et Partisans), he was arrested by the French police on 13 August 1941. Handed over to the German authorities and sentenced to hard labour, he spent several years in camps and prisons in Germany, among them in Siegburg where he met Erich Sander. Ancelin was finally liberated from a camp near Frankfurt with other inmates by American troops in April 1945, and returned to France. On 8 November 1956, he received the official title of “deported resistance fighter”. Marcel Ancelin died in 2003, having never told his family or friends about his heroic past.

Erich Sander wrote of him in a letter to his parents: “One of the three (French men) has some very striking features, which is sure to give father some pleasure […] Very intelligent chap, by the way. He wants to come and visit me after the war.” However, Erich Sander did not live to see the end of the war. He died on 23 March 1944, after his severe abdominal pain was ignored for days by the prison authorities.

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Proletarian Mother
1927, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 3/8 in. (25.5 x 18.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Raoul Hausmann as a Dancer
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 in. (25.6 x 17.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Red Cross Nurse
1924, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 5/8 in. (25.7 x 19.4cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Road Workers in the Ruhr Region
c. 1928, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 3/16 in. (25.7 x 18.2cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Rural Bride
1920-1925, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 1/2 in. (25.8 x 19cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Rural Brother and Sister
1925-1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/4 x 7 3/16 in. (26 x 18.3cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

In the history of photography, few projects have proven as groundbreaking as People of the 20th Century. August Sander (1876-1964) developed his ambitious series over more than six decades, capturing the diverse social fabric of his home country of Germany during a period marked by cultural upheaval and change. A new exhibition at the Yale University Art Gallery showcases over 600 prints from this landmark work, inviting viewers to experience the breadth and depth of Sander’s vision. Never before has his output received such comprehensive treatment in a museum display.

Sander undertook to photograph people from all walks of life and organise them into groups, whether by class, gender, profession, or other traits – resulting in a sociological archive of Germany in the first half of the 20th century. The installation at the Gallery draws its structure from the typology he established: The Farmer; The Skilled Tradesman; The Woman; Classes and Professions; The Artists; The City; and The Last People. Each of Sander’s portraits at once represents an individual and a social archetype, exploring the tension between public identity and personal uniqueness. As he explained, “The individual does not make the history of his time, but he both impresses himself on it and expresses its meaning.”

In one image, the photographer’s eldest son, Erich, poses with his fellow working college students. He appears again in a photograph taken surreptitiously while imprisoned for leftist activity. Such reoccurrences make clear that Sander’s categories are not as fixed as they may at first appear, with many individuals and motifs showing up across different classifications. Further challenging the project’s claim to offer a neat and neutral study of social types is the deeply personal character of some of the pictures. Indeed, People of the 20th Century incorporates intimate portraits of Sander’s family, including the poignant My Wife in Joy and Sorrow showing his wife, Anna, with their twin infants, one of whom did not survive.

Sander was steeped in the avant-garde movements of early 20th-century Germany as he cultivated a realistic style aimed at portraying life as it was, without romanticisation. Among these influences were the Cologne Progressives, a collective of artists deeply invested in labor activism, and the New Objectivity, which countered the era’s prevailing Expressionism with a manner of ostensible impartiality or resignation. This turn away from subjective expression in art shaped Sander’s approach to framing his subjects. He situated figures carefully within their environments such that their surroundings tell parts of their stories: as in the above-mentioned Political Prisoner, the individual becomes inextricable from the context.

Following the rise to power of the National Socialist party in 1933, Sander remained in Germany and faced professional constraints due to the nature and content of his artwork. Defying the representational mandates imposed by Nazi ideology, he photographed marginalised peoples – those with disabilities, the unemployed, and the persecuted. Even when an early version of the project was destroyed by the regime, Sander persisted, documenting the stories of those often overlooked by society. Through his lens, every subject was given dignity and importance, creating a stark contrast to the dehumanising rhetoric of this period.

Judy Ditner is the Richard Benson Curator of Photography and Digital Media

Yale University Art Gallery Spring 2026 Magazine

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Street Photographer
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 7/8 in. (25.8 x 20cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
“Test Your Strength” Showman
1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 7/16 in. (25.6 x 18.9cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Architect Couple [Dora und Hans Heinz Lüttgen]
1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
8 × 9 3/8 in. (20.3 × 23.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Hans Heinz Lüttgen (actually Theodor Heinrich Lüttgen; born 16. November 1895 (according to another source 1898) in Düsseldorf; died July 1976 in New York) was a German architect, interior designer and artist. According to his designs, the Sartory rooms and settlement buildings in Riehl were built in Cologne, as well as a series of single-family houses and villas in Wuppertal, which can be attributed to the style of the New Building of the 1920s and 1930s and now have “cult status”.

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Dadaist Raoul Hausmann [with Hedwig Mankiewitz and Vera Broïdo]
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/4 x 7 1/2 in. (26 x 19cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Hedwig Mankiewitz (also known as Hedwig Hausmann, 1893–1974) was a German painter and a vital, yet frequently under-appreciated, figure in the European avant-garde and Dada art movements. She is best known as the second wife, muse, and collaborator of the influential Dadaist Raoul Hausmann. Mankiewitz played a crucial role in providing emotional and financial support to Hausmann, especially during the tumultuous years when he was classified as a banned artist under the Nazi regime.

Vera Broïdo (7 September 1907 – 11 February 2004) was a Russian-born writer and a chronicler of the Russian Revolution, as one who grew up through it and lost her mother to its aftermath…

During her time in Berlin in the 1920s, Broido met avant garde artist and Dadaist turned society photographer Raoul Hausmann and became his lover and muse, living in a ménage à trois with him and his wife Hedwig in the fashionable Charlottenburg district of Berlin between 1928 and 1934.

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Industrialist [Max Spindler]
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 3/16 in. (25.5 x 18.2cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Notary
1924, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.6 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Painter Couple [Martha und Otto Dix]
1925-1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 15/16 x 9 7/16 in. (20.2 x 24cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Martha Dix (née Lindner; other married name Koch; July 19, 1895 – March 6, 1985) was a German goldsmith and silversmith who was the wife of the painter Otto Dix.

Wilhelm Heinrich Otto Dix (German; 2 December 1891 – 25 July 1969) was a German painter and printmaker, noted for his ruthless and harshly realistic depictions of German society during the Weimar Republic and the brutality of war. Along with George Grosz and Max Beckmann, he is widely considered one of the most important artists of the Neue Sachlichkeit.

Martha Dix and the renowned German painter Otto Dix formed one of the most creatively documented couples of the Weimar era. She was a trained goldsmith and silversmith, and was her husband’s primary muse.

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Person of the Soil
1910, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.5 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
The Sage
1913, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.6 x 18.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Three Generations in a Fairground Caravan
1926-1932, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 5/8 in. (25.5 x 19.3cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Three Generations of the Family
1912, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
6 15/16 x 10 1/16 in. (17.6 x 25.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Unemployed
1928, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 6 3/8 in. (25.5 x 16.2cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Unemployed Sailor
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 1/16 in. (25.5 x 18cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Usherettes
1926-1932, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 3/8 in. (25.7 x 18.8cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Varnisher
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 1/16 in. (25.8 x 18cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Victim of an Explosion
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.9 x 18.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Victim of Persecution
c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 7/8 in. (25.6 x 20cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Victim of Persecution [Miss Oppenheim]
c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 7/8 in. (25.7 x 20cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Victim of Persecution [Margarete (Grete) Trier Oppenheim]
c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 7/16 in. (25.5 x 18.9cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Victim of Persecution [Mr. Leubsdorf]
c. 1938, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 3/16 in. (25.6 x 18.2cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

The twelve portraits in this series were taken by the German photographer August Sander in Cologne and nearby towns around 1938, at the height of Hitler’s power. Although Sander’s Jewish subjects were probably friends and neighbours, he labelled these photographs simply “Persecuted Jews.” It is possible that Sander, who was not Jewish, made the photographs to help desperate German Jews obtain exit papers. Sander himself had been a victim of Nazi persecution in 1934 when many of his plates were destroyed by the authorities and his eldest son was imprisoned for his antifascist activities.

Text from The Jewish Museum website

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Village Schoolteacher
1921, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 7 3/8 in. (25.7 x 18.7 cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Woman from a Fairground Caravan
c. 1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/8 x 6 1/8 in. (25.7 x 15.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Wholesale Merchant and His Wife
1923, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 1/16 x 7 3/8 in. (23 x 18.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Woodcutter
1931, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.8 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Workers’ Council from the Ruhr Region
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 1/16 × 10 1/16 in. (18 × 25.5cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Working Students [Erich Sander, far left; Richard Creutzberg, center left]
1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 1/2 x 10 in. (19 x 25.4cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Vagabonds
1929-1930, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.6 x 18.6cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Young Farmer
1912-1913
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 7/8 in. (25.5 x 20cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Young Farmers
1914, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 3/16 x 7 5/16 in. (25.9 x 18cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Young Farmers
1925-1927, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
10 1/16 x 7 3/8 in. (25.6 x 18.7cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Young Mother, Middle-Class
1926, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
7 3/8 x 8 in. (18.8 x 20.3cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Young Photographer [Gunther Sander]
1929, printed c. 1990-1999
Gelatin silver print
9 15/16 x 7 1/2 in. (25.3 x 19.1cm)
Societe Anonyme Acquisition Fund and Katharine Ordway Fund
© Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Cologne / ARS, NY

Yale University Art Gallery
1111 Chapel Street (at York Street)
New Haven, CT

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Friday 10.00am – 5.00pm
Thursday 10.00am – 8.00pm
Saturday – Sunday 11.00am – 5.00pm
Closed Mondays

Yale University Art Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997)’ at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam

Ontworpen wereld: Door de ogen van Tata Ronkholz (1940–1997)

Exhibition dates: 14th February – 21st June, 2026

Curator: Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Director of Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Trinkhalle / Kiosk, Düsseldorf, Sankt-Franziskus-Straße 107
1977
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

In a nutshell:

Large format camera
Front on, realist, sharply defined objective documentary photographs of architectural structures of the urban landscape
In series

In reality:

Structures cut from the fabric of existence
Isolated by the subjective eye of the photographer and the lens of the camera
What to include or exclude

(In the contemporary photographs of the spaces in the posting, the shops are surrounded by trees and vegetation, they have transformed from kiosk to shuttered shop, from boutique to florist: the architecture remains but traces of previous incarnations are visible only in these photographs. Nothing is permanent except change).

In the photographs of kiosks, corner shops and industrial gates, it is the minutiae of existence (not as mere decoration) that gives these supposedly objective photographs their subjective power. For example, “the photo Trinkhalle, Köln-Nippes – with its ice cream and newspaper advertisements and vending machines for chewing gum and cigarettes” is more than amusing and engaging – it depicts vital, archaeological evidence of the transitory nature of human existence in the pyschogeography of the urbanscape.1

In Ronkholz’ photographs of the terrain (from the Latin terra, earth/land) of the city, her exploration of urban environments emphasises interpersonal connections to places – and testify “to social, cultural, and economic change and shows how people shape the world around them.” (Press release)

This is the fluid boundary that these photographs so beautifully and incisively depict: the interface between architecture and human, between order (form/surface) and chaos (placement of insolent signs), between utopian perfection and dystopian unruliness – the one coexistent with the other.

This confluence of pattern and randomness, objective and subjective, is what gives these photographs of the everyday a lasting significance.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Guy Debord (November 1956). “Theory of the Dérive”. Les Lèvres Nues (9). Translated by Ken Knabb.

Many thankx to Huis Marseille, Amsterdam for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Sankt-Franziskus-Straße 104-107 Düsseldorf

Installation view of the exhibition Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February - June, 2026

Installation views of the exhibition Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February – June, 2026

Installation view of the exhibition Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February – June, 2026 showing at left, Tata Ronkholz’s Düsseldorf Harbor (1980)

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997) 'Wallpaper store' 1964 (installation view)

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Wallpaper store (installation views)
1964
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997) 'Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence' 1975 (installation view)

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence (installation view)
1975
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Santa Maria Assunta, Dom / Cathedral, Volterra
1975
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Palazzo dei Vescovi (Museo dell’Antico), Pistoia
1975
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997) 'Industrial Gate' Nd (installation view)

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Industrial Gate (installation view)
Nd
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
ECT. Rotterdam/Prinses Beatrixhaven, Reeweg
1977
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Firma/Company Tromm, Tor Gleisanschluss/Gate railway siding, Köln-Niehl
1983
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Firma/Company ROW, Hafen, Tor/Gate Nr. 0930, Wesseling-Godorf
1984
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz was one of the first students in Bernd and Hilla Becher’s famous photography class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Her fellow students included Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth, all of whom became artists of world renown. Oddly enough Tata Ronkholz’ work is only now receiving the same international acclaim. The retrospective Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997), on show at Huis Marseille from 14 February until 21 June 2026, is the first large-scale tribute to this many-sided artist.

Objective-documentary photography

Tata Ronkholz was a photographer, product designer, and interior architect. Her photographic series lie within the tradition of objective, documentary photography, a tradition which was decisively shaped by the artist couple Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like theirs, Ronkholz’ work is characterised by clear compositions, a serial approach, and a documentary focus on architectural structures and everyday architectures. Using a large-format camera she produced sharply defined and realistic photographs in which the subject matter, rather than the individual style of the artist, takes centre stage. Her work is predominantly in black and white, although colour images also appear, demonstrating her ambition to engage with the artistic colour photography that emerged in Germany during the 1970s and ’80s, following the example set by the New Color Photography introduced by the American photographers Stephen Shore and William Eggleston.

Kiosks and corner shops

Tata Ronkholz became known for her appealing series of kiosks (Trinkhallen) and small shops that capture typical moments of urban everyday culture. These were photographed between 1977 and 1985, particularly in neighbourhoods of Cologne and Düsseldorf, in the Ruhr area, as well as in Leverkusen and Krefeld. For example, the photo Trinkhalle, Köln-Nippes – with its ice cream and newspaper advertisements and vending machines for chewing gum and cigarettes – is as amusing and engaging as Boutique, Köln-Mülheim in which, according to the store sign, alongside clothing records were also for sale. The photographs illustrate the extent to which product offerings, decoration, and advertising in public spaces has been transformed. Tata Ronkholz’ choice of subject means that her work indirectly testifies to social, cultural, and economic change and shows how people shape the world around them.

Industrial gates

Another significant series is dedicated to industrial gates, photographed between 1977 and 1985. The sober black-and-white images of these gates, with their grids and frameworks, offer glimpses into the interiors of industrial areas. In the photographs the gates function as interfaces between private and public space, between interior and exterior, and between activity and calm. Their aesthetic, reminiscent of abstract artworks, imbues the everyday with a new significance.

Collaboration with Thomas Struth

In 1979 Ronkholz, together with her fellow student Thomas Struth, began work on an impressive documentary series on Düsseldorf’s Rheinhafen. The project originated from the planned redevelopment of this historic harbour area – a site that, in its original form, was considered an industrial area of significant urban historical and architectural importance. Together they set out to document the harbour in its entirety, capturing its historic buildings, technical installations, and operational structures. In carefully composed images they recorded façades, interiors, silos, warehouses, crane structures, and harbour basins, before these elements partially disappeared or were fundamentally altered during the restructuring.

Tata Ronkholz as product designer

Between 1961 and 1965 Ronkholz studied at the Werkkunstschule Krefeld (an academy of applied art) with a focus on furniture design, and subsequently worked as a freelance designer until 1977. The exhibition also explores this aspect of Ronkholz’ oeuvre, including depictions of geometrically shaped furniture and lighting fixtures as well as designs for office and cafeteria furniture. Ronkholz’ designs are characterised by clear forms and functional elegance. Finally, the retrospective also presents early photographs of architectural forms created in 1975/76 in Italy and France, revealing her strong affinity for aspects of the ‘designed world’ across different areas of life.

Ronkholz’ estate, acquired in 2011 by VAN HAM Art Estate in Cologne, forms the basis of the exhibition alongside the holdings of Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf. Significant contributions have also been made from the in-house collections of Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – who also curated the exhibition – and through loans from private collections.

Book

The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue, Tata Ronkholz: Gestaltete Welt. Eine Retropektive (2025, Schirmer/Mosel Verlag GmbH), with texts in German and English. It is available from the Huis Marseille museum shop (€49.90).

Text from the Huis Marseille website

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Imbissstube/Snack bar, Düsseldorf-Rath, Linienstraße 141
1977
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Trinkhalle/Kiosk, Ratingen, Volkardeyer Straße 25
1977
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Trinkhalle/Kiosk, Köln-Nippes, Merheimer Straße 294
1983
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Merheimer Str. 294, Köln-Nippes

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Insurance office, Leverkusen-Schlehbusch
1970s-1980s
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Imbissstube/Snack bar, Köln-Mülheim, Berliner Straße 120
1979
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Boutique, Köln-Mülheim, Berliner Straße 120
1980
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Berliner Str. 120, Köln, Germany

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Friseur/Hairdresser, Köln-Ehrenfeld, Philippstraße 30
1980
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Lagerhalle mit Löwenwappen/Warehouse with lion crest
1979
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Im Düsseldorfer Hafen / In Düsseldorf harbor
around 1980
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Im Düsseldorfer Hafen/In Düsseldorf harbour
around 1980
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Technik und Kräne/Technology and cranes
Nd
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954) 'Zollhafen / Customs harbor' 1979

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Zollhafen/Customs harbour
1979
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Getreidespeicher, Rhenus seitlich / Grain silo, Rhenus lateral
1979
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Technik und Kräne / Technology and cranes
Nd
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor (Berger Hafen v. d. VHS/from Adult education center), Düsseldorf
1979
From the series Rheinhafen/Rhine harbor Düsseldorf, 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2026

Charles Wilp (German, 1932-2005)
Tata Ronkholz
c. 1979

View of the exhibition poster for 'Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997)' at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February - June, 2026

View of the exhibition posters for Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) at Huis Marseille, Amsterdam, February – June, 2026

Huis Marseille
Keizersgracht 401
1016 EK Amsterdam
Phone: +31 20 531 89 89

Opening hours
Tue – Sun, 11 – 18 h

Huis Marseille website

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Exhibition: ‘The Worlds of Ilse Bing’ at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley MA

Exhibition dates: 19th February – 24th May, 2026

Curator: Dr. Carrie Cushman, Director of the Bates College Museum of Art and former Linda Wyatt Gruber ’66 Curatorial Fellow in Photography at the Davis Museum

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) 'Music Stands' 1933 from the exhibition 'The Worlds of Ilse Bing' at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley MA, February - May, 2026

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Music Stands
1933
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 7 in. x 11 15/16 in. (17.8 cm x 30.3cm)
Mount: 11 in. x 14 in. (27.9 cm x 35.6cm)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)

A bonus mid-week posting on this compact exhibition on the work of German photographer Isle Bing (1899-1998)

It’s wonderful to see the expressive musicality and movement in Bing’s black and white photographs, most of the images new to me. I would have loved to have seen more photographs from this “New Woman” but this is all I have from the exhibition. The museum is very lucky to have had a recent gift of vintage photographs donated by Bing’s mentee and friend Suzanne Ciani (class of ’68).

But if you want to be taken seriously as a collecting institute please make sure that you title the artist and subject correctly on your collections website pages. It’s not The Honorable Daisy Fellowers it is The Honorable Daisy Fellowes (corrected below) and it’s not Florence Henry it is Florence Henri!

Little things make all the difference.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Davis Museum for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998) 'Acrobat with Black Ball' 1936 from the exhibition 'The Worlds of Ilse Bing' at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley MA, February - May, 2026

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Acrobat with Black Ball
1936
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 8 3/4 in. x 11 1/8 in. (22.2cm x 28.3cm)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Circus Horse in NYC
1936
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 13 1/2 in. x 19 3/8 in. (34.3 cm x 49.2cm)
Mount: 19 5/8 in. x 25 1/2 in. (49.8 cm x 64.8cm)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)

Featuring a recent gift of vintage photographs by the groundbreaking photographer Ilse Bing (1899-1998), this exhibition explores the development of the photographic medium in the mid-twentieth century. The era in which Bing came to prominence saw the birth of the journalistic photo-essay, the launch of the 35-mm Leica camera, and experiments with abstract photograms and solarization. Artists led critical debates over how photography should remain true to itself as a medium of and for the modern world. From Frankfurt to Paris to New York City, Bing was at the centre of it all, carving out a place for herself as “Queen of the Leica” in a male-dominated world of image making. The Worlds of Ilse Bing is organised geographically according to the three cities where Bing lived, placing her work in conversation with the artists who made up her creative worlds and providing insight into her influences, process, and undeniable impact on others as they pushed the boundaries of modern art.

Text from the Wellesley College website

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Jane Neidensaul, Hands on Harp
1943
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 10 1/4 in. x 13 7/8 in. (26 cm x 35.2cm)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)

Jane B. Weidensaul (1935-2003) was a prominent American harpist, educator, musicologist, and editor known for her contributions to harp literature and pedagogy. A Juilliard graduate and assistant to Marcel Grandjany, she taught at Juilliard and the Manhattan School of Music, served as editor of the American Harp Journal (1978-1996), and authored numerous scholarly works.

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
La Main de Szymon Goldberg
1949
Gelatin silver print
Image: 13 1/4 in. x 9 1/2 in. (33.7 cm x 24.1cm)
Mount: 21 3/16 in. x 17 5/16 in. (53.8 cm x 44cm)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)

Szymon Goldberg (American born Poland, 1909-1993)

Szymon Goldberg (1 June 1909 – 19 July 1993) was a Polish-born Jewish classical violinist and conductor, latterly an American.

Born in Włocławek, Congress Poland, Goldberg played the violin as a child growing up in Warsaw. His first teacher was Henryk Czaplinski, a student of the great Czech violinist Otakar Ševčík; his second was Mieczysław Michałowicz, a student of Leopold Auer. In 1917, at age eight, Goldberg moved to Berlin to study the violin with the legendary pedagogue Carl Flesch. He was also a student of Josef Wolfsthal.

After a recital in Warsaw in 1921, and a debut with the Berlin Philharmonic in 1924 in which he played three concertos, he was engaged as concert-master of the Dresden Philharmonic from 1925 to 1929. In 1929 he was offered the position of concertmaster of the Berlin Philharmonic by its principal conductor, Wilhelm Furtwängler. He accepted the position, serving from 1930 to 1934. During these years, he also performed in a string trio with Paul Hindemith on viola and Emanuel Feuermann on cello, and also led a string quartet of Berlin Philharmonic members.

The rise of the Third Reich forced Goldberg to leave the orchestra in 1934, despite Furtwängler’s attempts to safeguard the Jewish members of the orchestra. Thereafter, he toured Europe with the pianist Lili Kraus. He made his American debut in New York in 1938 at Carnegie Hall. While in the former Netherlands East Indies he formed the Goldberg Quartet, together with Robert Pikler on viola, Louis Mojzer on cello and Eugenie Emerson, piano. Pikler and Mojzer were Hungarians and Emerson was American. This Piano Quartet toured the major cities in Java, before the Japanese invasion and occupation. Goldberg’s first wife was a skilled artist and sculptor. She was interned by the Japanese in the Tjihapit Women’s Camp in Bandung, together with Mojzer’s family, while Goldberg and Kraus were on a tour of Asia.

He toured Australia for three months in 1946. Eventually he went to the United States and became a naturalised American citizen in 1953. From 1951 to 1965 he taught at the Aspen Music School. Concurrently he was active as a conductor. In 1955 he founded the Netherlands Chamber Orchestra in Amsterdam, which he led until 1979. He also took the ensemble on many tours. From the years 1977 to 1979 he was the conductor of the Manchester Camerata.

He taught at Yale University from 1978 to 1982, the Juilliard School in New York City from 1978 to 1989, the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia from 1980 to 1981, and the Manhattan School of Music in New York starting in 1981. From 1990 until his death, he conducted the New Japan Philharmonic in Tokyo. …

He made a number of recordings, most notably a celebrated series of Mozart and Beethoven sonatas with Lili Kraus before World War II, the three Brahms Sonatas with Artur Balsam (Brunswick AXTL 1082), and Mozart and Schubert pieces with Radu Lupu (with whom he performed as a duo in concert) in the 1970s. The Berlin Philharmonic, in a 2014 tribute to their former concertmaster, wrote that in the music of Bach and Mozart, Goldberg “brought a poise and a beauty of tone that seemed like perfection. Indeed he was the finest Mozart violinist of his time, with the feline grace essential for the violin sonatas, the concertos and the Sinfonia concertante.”

Text from the Wikipedia website

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Konrad Wolff, Hands
1949
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 13 3/8 in. x 10 1/2 in. (34 cm x 26.7cm)
Mount: 14 in. x 11 in. (35.6 cm x 27.9cm)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)

Her photograph Konrad Wolff, Hands illustrates her formalist technique, as the camera closes in on two hands playing a piano – the black and white of the piano keys contrast with the grey tones of the hands to create a dynamic composition of linear, oblique shapes. She often manipulated her prints, flipping them upside-down or turning them sideways to view their compositional narratives in new ways.

Text from the Davis Museum website

Konrad Wolff (March 11, 1907 – October 23, 1989) was a German-born American pianist, composer, musicologist, and educator renowned for his interpretive performances of classical piano repertoire, his scholarly writings on musical pedagogy, and his role in preserving the legacy of his teacher Artur Schnabel.

Installation view of the exhibition The Worlds of Ilse Bing at the Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley MA, February – May, 2026 (wall text below)

Reflecting on her early career in the 1920s and 1930s, the groundbreaking photographer Ilse Bing (1899-1998) once proclaimed, “It was a fascinating time, because everything was new. We had nothing to hold onto.” The era in which Bing came to prominence saw the birth of the journalistic photo-essay, the launch of the 35mm Leica camera, and experiments in the darkroom. Through these developments, artists led critical debates over how photography could remain true to itself as a medium of and for the modern world. From Frankfurt to Paris to New York City, Bing was at the centre of it all, carving out a place for herself as “Queen of the Leica” in a male-dominated world of image making.

The Worlds of Ilse Bing places Bing’s work in conversation with the artists who made up her creative worlds, as tougher they forged a new visual language that married the experiences of urban life and advances in industrial production with the spirit of the avant-garde. The exhibition is organised geographically according to the three cities where Bing lived, providing insight into her influences, process, and impact. Featuring a recent gift of vintage photographs donated by Bing’s mentee and friend Suzanne Ciani ’68, the exhibition highlights Bing’s enormous breadth of work, from documentary to portraiture to fashion photography, just as it traces her answers to the question of what photography could be in the twentieth century.

Wall text from the exhibition

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Sun in Clouds Over Swiss Mountains
1929/1984
Sheet: 6 1/4 in. x 9 1/2 in. (15.9 cm x 24.1cm)
Mount: 11 in. x 14 in. (27.9 cm x 35.6cm)
Gelatin silver print
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Merry Go Round, Paris
1932
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 11 in. x 8 3/4 in. (27.9 cm x 22.2cm)
Mount: 16 1/2 in. x 13 3/4 in. (41.9 cm x 34.9cm)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Dancers Balanchine Tchelitchew
1933
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 11 3/16 in. x 8 1/2 in. (28.4 cm x 21.6cm)
Mount: 14 in. x 11 in. (35.6 cm x 27.9cm)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)

George Balanchine (Georgian-American, 1904-1983) and Pavel Tchelitchew (Russian, 1898-1957) were both artists who collaborated significantly in the realm of ballet during the 1930s and 1940s. Tchelitchew, a surrealist painter and designer, created innovative, often translucent sets and costumes for several of Balanchine’s ballets, helping to define the visual aesthetic of that period.

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
The Honorable Daisy Fellowes
1933
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 8 13/16 in. x 11 1/8 in. (22.4 cm x 28.3cm)
Mount: 13 3/16 in. x 16 7/16 in. (33.5 cm x 41.8cm)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)

The Hon. Daisy Fellowes (née Marguerite Séverine Philippine Decazes de Glücksberg) (29 April 1890 in Paris – 13 December 1962 in Paris) was a celebrated 20th-century society figure, acclaimed beauty, minor novelist and poet, Paris Editor of American Harper’s Bazaar, fashion icon, and an heiress to the Singer sewing machine fortune.

Ilse Bing (German, 1899-1998)
Spider Web in Stables
1951
Gelatin silver print
Sheet: 13 9/16 in. x 10 1/2 in. (34.4 cm x 26.7cm)
Mount: 14 in. x 10 3/4 in. (35.6 cm x 27.3cm)
Davis Museum at Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA
Gift of Suzanne Ciani (Class of 1968)

Davis Museum at Wellesley College
106 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02481
781-283-1000

Opening hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 11am – 5pm

Wellesley College website

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Exhibition: ‘Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing’ at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Exhibition dates: 13th June, 2025 – 4th January, 2026

Curator: Maria L. Kelly, High Museum of Art assistant curator of photography

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991) 'Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #37' 1953 from the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026

Aaron Siskind (American, 1903-1991)
Pleasures and Terrors of Levitation #37
1953
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Adair and Joe B. Massey in honour of Gus Kayafas

Aaron Siskind was recognised for the ways he rendered his surroundings into often stark shapes and forms, which reflected his fascination with contemporary trends in abstract art. He was an influential teacher at Chicago’s Institute of Design, which was founded by László Moholy-Nagy as the New Bauhaus. This image of a person flying or falling comes from a series Siskind made of the contorted bodies of divers plunging into Lake Michigan. He masterfully created its disorienting effect through tight focus on the floating figure without contextual elements.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

While contemporarily AI-powered technologies are revolutionising the way we interact with and consume media, enabling us to “to process and analyse vast amounts of data quickly, making it easier to find and access the information we need” in the 1920s and 1930s there was also a revolution in the way artists (and their use of the camera) viewed and felt the world – one not based on information, image quality or duplicity in the veracity of the image but one based on the word, perspective – be that point of view, context, close ups, surreality, fragmentation, scale, concept, construction, colour, aesthetics, identity, gender, or radical experimentation.

In this departure from traditional photographic methods, “New Vision photographers foregrounded experimental techniques, including photograms, photomontages and compositions that favoured extreme angles and unusual viewpoints, and these extended to movements such as surrealism and constructivism.” (Press release)

To me, this New Vision is about experiencing different perspectives – experiencing, sensing, feeling and seeing the world in a new light. After the disasters and machine-ations, the destruction of a conservative way of life before the First World War, here was a way to grasp hold of (and picture) the speed of a new world order, the dreams of physiological analysis, the diversity of new identities, and the fluidity of rapidly evolving technological and social cultures.

While today this (r)evolution continues at an ever expanding pace with the consumption of huge amounts of information and images, I believe it may be advantageous to rest for a while on certain experiences and images … so that we let the daggers drop from our eyes, to ‘not make images’ in our minds eye but just to be present in the viewing of a photograph, so that we appreciate and understand every aspect of the great life spirit of this wondrous earth.

Then and now, new vision.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the High Museum of Art for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

The New Vision movement of the 1920s and 1930s offered a revolutionary approach to seeing the world. It represented a rebellion against traditional photographic methods and an embrace of avant-garde experimentation and innovative techniques. László Moholy-Nagy, an artist and influential teacher at the Bauhaus in Germany, named this period of expansion the “New Vision.” Today, the term encompasses photographic developments that took place between the two World Wars in Europe, America, and beyond. New Vision photographers foregrounded inventive techniques, including photograms, photomontages, and light studies, and made photographs that favoured extreme angles and unusual viewpoints. These approaches – which also extended to more defined movements like Surrealism – spoke to a desire to find and see different perspectives in the wake of World War I.

Uniting more than one hundred works from the High’s photography collection, the exhibition traces the movement’s impact, from its origins in the 1920s to today, and demonstrates its long-standing effect on subsequent generations.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing

Named by the influential German artist and teacher László Moholy-Nagy, the “New Vision” comprised an expansive variety of photographic exploration that took place in Europe, America, and beyond in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement was characterised by its departure from traditional photographic methods. New Vision photographers foregrounded experimental techniques, including photograms, photomontages, and light studies, and made photographs that favoured extreme angles and unusual viewpoints.

This exhibition, uniting more than one hundred works from the High’s robust photography collection, will trace the impact of the New Vision movement from its origins in the 1920s to today. Photographs from that era by Ilse Bing, Alexander Rodchenko, Imogen Cunningham, and Moholy-Nagy will be complemented by a multitude of works by modern and contemporary artists such as Barbara Kasten, Jerry Uelsmann, Hiroshi Sugimoto, and Abelardo Morell to demonstrate the long-standing impact of the movement on subsequent generations.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Installation view of the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026

Installation views of the exhibition Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 – January 2026
Photos: Mike Jensen

The High Museum of Art presents “Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing” (June 13, 2025 – Jan. 4, 2026), an exhibition uniting more than 100 works from the High’s robust photography collection to trace the impact of the New Vision movement from its origins in the 1920s to today. Works include century-old photographs exemplifying themes from the movement and modern and contemporary images that emphasise the relevance of current artistic and social practices as a response to the technological and cultural changes that occurred in the early 20th century.

“This exhibition provides an opportunity to illuminate photographers’ creativity and innovative practices, all inspired by the progression of the medium in the 1920s and 30s,” said High Museum of Art Director Rand Suffolk. “Many of the works are rarely on view, so it will be an exciting experience for visitors to see them and learn about photographers’ abilities as they reflect reality while experimenting with technique and perspective.” Named by the influential German artist and teacher László Moholy-Nagy, the “New Vision” comprised an expansive variety of photographic exploration that took place in Europe, America and beyond in the 1920s and 1930s. The movement was characterised by its departure from traditional photographic methods. New Vision photographers foregrounded experimental techniques, including photograms, photomontages and compositions that favoured extreme angles and unusual viewpoints, and these extended to movements such as surrealism and constructivism.

“Experiments in Seeing” features nearly 100 photographers. It also demonstrates how the New Vision movement revolutionised the medium of photography in the early 20th century in response to the great societal, economic and technological shifts spurred by the upheaval of the two World Wars. Photographs from that era by Ilse Bing, Alexander Rodchenko, Imogen Cunningham and Moholy-Nagy have been complemented by a multitude of photographs by modern and contemporary artists such as Barbara Kasten, Jerry Uelsmann, Hiroshi Sugimoto and Abelardo Morell to demonstrate the long-standing impact of the movement on subsequent generations.

The first section of the exhibition delves into experimental techniques that foreground the light-sensitive aspects of photography, followed by works created through in-camera manipulations or additions to the surfaces of the prints. Subsequent sections explore inventive methods of capturing unexpected views of the world articulated with radical angles or detailed close-ups. Other works showcase surreal approaches to subjects such as humanlike forms and bodies, the use of mirrors and doubling, and everyday scenes heightened by uncanny moments or distorted through the interplay of light, shadow and water.

“Not only does the early 20th century and its art movements continue to be influential, but that time also echoes our current moment – one that feels similarly consequential and innovative with the development of new emerging technologies and methods of communicating,” said Maria L. Kelly, the High’s assistant curator of photography. “The movements and happenings of a century ago are akin to those of today and those shown in the exhibition. There remains a desire for alternative ways to see and approach the world through art, and particularly through photography.”

“Photography’s New Vision: Experiments in Seeing” is on view in the Lucinda W. Bunnen Galleries for Photography located on the Lower Level of the High’s Wieland Pavilion.

Press release from the High Museum of Art

“Light was considered the medium that permits photography. But for me it became the main subject: the protagonist of my photography.”

Ilse Bing, c. 1920s

Light Experimentation

After the trauma of World War I, many artists felt compelled to reconsider conventional art making methods to better reflect and engage with the world. Some photographers turned their attention to the essential element of photography: light. Through innovative visual investigations, cameraless photographs were produced, viewes of the world altered, and scientific discoveries made.

Experimentations with illumination and light-sensitive paper in the darkroom gave rise to photograms, enabling artists to pursue abstraction and to wield light as a sculptural element. The process of solarisation – reversing tones in a print using a flash of light during developing – provided an unconventional view of a subject. Early attempts to capture traces of light on film led to scientific innovations such as using strove lights to freeze movement, depicting magnetic fields, and tracing electrical currents on light sensitive paper.

These processes aim to reveal the invisible, with the elements of change as a constant companion. While artists can insert some control over the elements, the process ultimately shapes the final image. Many artworks in this section exist as unique prints, challenging the assumption of the reproducibility of photography, and emphasising the singularity of the creative moment.

Wall text from the exhibition

Francis Bruguière (American, 1879-1945) 'The Light That Never Was on Land or Sea' c. 1925 from the exhibition 'Photography's New Vision: Experiments in Seeing' at the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, June 2025 - January 2026

Francis Bruguière (American, 1879-1945)
The Light That Never Was on Land or Sea
c. 1925
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Georgia-Pacific Corporation

Nathan Lerner (American, 1913-1977)
Light Drawing #8 (Smoke)
1938-1939
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Hilary Leff and Elliot Groffman

Ilse Bing (American born Germany, 1899-1998)
Untitled [Seated Woman with Necklace, Solarized]
1943
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of the Estate of Ilse Bing Wolff

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Camera Movement on Flashlight, Chicago
c. 1949
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the H. B. and Doris Massey Charitable Trust, Dr. Robert L. and Lucinda W. Bunnen, Collections Council Acquisition Fund, Jackson Fine Art, Powell, Goldstein, Frazer and Murphy, Jane and Clay Jackson, Beverly and John Baker, Roni and Sid Funk, Gloria and Paul Sternberg, and Jeffery L. Wigbels
© 2018 The Estate of Harry Callahan

Abelardo Morell (American born Cuba, b. 1948)
Still Life with Wine Glass: Photogram on 20″ x 24″ Film
2006
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the Friends of Photography
© Abelardo Morell

Hiroshi Sugimoto (Japanese, b. 1948)
Lightning Fields 182
2009
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase through funds provided by patrons of Collectors Evening 2012
© Hiroshi Sugimoto

Inspired by William Henry Fox Talbot, an inventor of photography who was fascinated with electromagnetic conduction, Hiroshi Sugimoto began applying charges of electricity directly to unexposed photographic film. After months of honing his technique in the darkroom, he managed to achieve remarkable results with a handheld wand charged by a generator. His Lightning Fields photographs are made without a camera or lens. Here, the abstract visual trace of an electric charge measuring over 400,000 volts sweeps across the composition, reading like the textures of a human hand, the upward tentacles of a fern, or the stark branches of a tree.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Hans-Christian Schink (German, b. 1961)
2/26/2010, 7:54 am – 8:54 am, S36° 49.622′ E 175° 47.340′
2010
From the series 1h
© Hans-Christian Schink

Abelardo Morell (American born Cuba, b. 1948)
Camera Obscura: View of Philadelphia from Loews Hotel Room #3013 with Upside Down Bed, April 14th, 2014
2014
Pigmented inkjet print
High Museum of Art Atlanta, gift of Dr. Roger Hartl
© Abelardo Morell

V. Elizabeth Turk (American, b. 1945)
Calaeno
2018
Van Dyke print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection
© Elizabeth Turk

V. Elizabeth Turk is an Atlanta-based photographer whose work explores the connections between the human body and the natural world. To make this print, Turk used an analog process from the 1800s that involves coating a large sheet of paper with light-sensitive chemicals. She then arranged her model on top of the sheet and exposed it to light, creating a ghostly silhouette, before repeating the exposure with plants. The resulting photogram is a unique image in which botanical forms intersect with the body, alluding to bones, veins, and skin and suggesting a visceral bond between humans and the environment.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

“The limits of photography are incalculable; everything is so recent that even the mere act of searching may lead to creative results. […] The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as of the pen.”

László Moholy-Nagy 1928

Radical Viewpoints

From photography’s inception in 1839, camera technology involved cumbersome equipment and time-consuming development processes until the advent of lightweight cameras in the 1920s. Photographers were then able to work more nimbly, transforming photography into a medium capable of capturing fleeting moments, unusual viewpoints, and multiple perspectives. The exploration of unexpected angles became a hallmark of New Vision photography. Sharp diagonals, extreme vantage points, and shortened perspectives opened novel pathways of perceiving otherwise commonplace environments.

Alexander Rodchenko, a pioneer in this method, championed the camera’s ability to reveal, stating, “in order to teach man to see from all viewpoints, it is necessary to photograph […] from completely unexpected viewpoints and in unexpected positions […] We don’t see what we are looking at. We don’t see marvellous perspectives.” This approach aimed to provide a fuller impression of subjects, prompting viewers to seek and appreciate what might otherwise be overlooked.

Though these early photographs may not appear groundbreaking today, their makers’ carefully considered methods transferred how photography is used. This is evident in photographers’ creative interpretations of their surroundings over the past century.

Wall text from the exhibition

Alexander Rodchenko (Russian, 1891-1956)
Sbor na demonstratsia (Gathering for a Demonstration)
1928
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Joseph and Yolandra Alexander, Moscow/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York
© Estate of Alexander Rodchenko/RAO, Moscow/VAGA at Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Alexander Rodchenko was a key figure in the movements of New Vision and Constructivism – abstract and functional art that reflected an industrial society. Advocating “to achieve a revolution in our visual thought,” he explored various methods, such as photographing from unexpected angles, to capture dynamic views and expose new realities. With a new, lightweight 35 mm camera, he often photographed from his apartment balcony to create dramatic scenes of the street below. The perspective in this photograph flattens the building’s stories into one visual field, giving the image a theatrical quality as an onlooker peers over the railing.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Walker Evans (American, 1903-1975)
The Bridge
1929
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Arnold H. Crane
© Walker Evans Archive, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

A central figure among twentieth-century American photographers, Walker Evans created works in his early career that sample from the New Vision aesthetic, which he may have encountered while abroad in Paris in 1926. His photographs of New York City, made after he returned to the United States, feature dramatically angled or cropped scenes of architecture and city life. Evans made numerous photographic studies of the Brooklyn Bridge from both below and on the bridge, portraying it less as a recognisable landmark and more as a hulking expanse whose form fills each tight frame.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

László Moholy-Nagy (Hungarian 1895-1946)
Stage Set for Madame Butterfly
1931
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Georgia-Pacific Corporation

Moholy-Nagy, a leader of the New Vision, had an expansive artistic practice that included painting, photography, sculpture, film, and more. As a teacher at the Bauhaus, which connected art and industry, he believed in technology’s potential to advance art and society. In 1929, he became set designer at the Kroll Opera House and created avant-garde sets with translucent and perforated materials, often making light itself a sculptural element. Lucia Moholy, a photographer, writer, teacher, and Moholy-Nagy’s first wife, was commissioned as Kroll’s stage photographer. In this image, which either artist may have made, the sharp angle shot from above complicates the set of Madame Butterfly, emphasising intersecting, moving elements and heightening areas of light and shadow.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Lucas Foglia (American, b. 1983)
Esme Swimming, Parkroyal on Pickering, Singapore
2014
Pigmented inkjet print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Irene Zhou
© Lucas Foglia

Close Ups

Similar to the practice of using unusual angles to offer unexpected perspectives, some photographers began capturing highly detailed, close-up views of objects. This approach affords a study of texture, pattern, and structure that may otherwise go unnoticed by the human eye. By eliminating surroundings that could offer a narrative, the physicality of the object becomes the primary focus, allowing it to transcend beyond its everyday existence.

Practitioners of straight photography in the United States and the concurrent New Objectivity movement in Germany shared a core desire to unearth a balance of the familiar and the foreign within intricate images of forms. While Imogen Cunningham and Edward Weston perfected carefully composed studies of plants and other natural matter, Albert Renger-Patzsch, Alexander Rodchenko, and Ralph Steiner explored scientific and industrial objects. Such images celebrated the technological advancements of the time and revealed how mechanical structures often mimic those found in nature, suggesting a shared framework, and a shared beauty, between humanmade and natural. The emphasis on detail and abstraction invites viewers to reconsider their perceptions of both the ordinary and the extraordinary in the world around them.

Wall text from the exhibition

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Agave Americanus
1929
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust

Imogen Cunningham (American, 1883-1976)
Agave Design I
c. 1920
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from Georgia-Pacific Corporation
© The Imogen Cunningham Trust

Edward Weston (American 1886-1958)
Palma Cuernavaca II
1925
Palladium print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection to mark the retirement of Gudmund Vigtel
© Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents

Ralph Steiner (American, 1899-1986)
Electrical Switches
1929
Gelatin silver print
8 x 10 5/16 inches
Purchase with funds from Georgia-Pacific Corporation

Harry Callahan (American, 1912-1999)
Weed Against Sky, Detroit
1948
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of the Callahan and Hollinger Families
© 2018 The Estate of Harry Callahan

Eugenia de Olazabal (Mexican, b. 1936)
Espinas
c. 1985
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of the artist

“Surrealism lies at the heart of the photographic enterprise: in the very creation of a duplicate world, of a reality in the second degree, narrower but more dramatic than the one perceived by natural vision.”

Susan Sontag, 1973

Surreality

Surrealism emerged as an artistic movement in reaction to the horrors of World War I. The often disconcerting imagery and literature of the movement reflected a world that felt disorienting and chaotic and captured how the very foundations of reason and humanity were tested and questioned through the realities of war. In his Surrealist Manifesto (1924), French writer Andre Breton advocates for a rejection of rational ways of approaching the world in four of dreams and imagination as pathways to new creative expressions.

Photography played an important role in the Surrealist movement. Artists valued how the medium could capture spontaneous moments that reveal the unexpected, be manipulated to stage scenes, or be altered with darkroom processes. They harness photography in a multitude of ways to create dreamlike and unconscious associations with reality. In these galleries, artists explore uncanny moments and create links to the human psyche by focusing on humanlike forms and fragmented body parts, mirrored and doubled views, and the impact of light and shadows in space.

Wall text from the exhibition

Eugène Atget (French, 1857-1927)
Men’s Fashions (Avenue des Gobelins)
1925, printed 1956
Gelatin silver print
Purchase

Eugène Atget was the great chronicler of Paris at the turn of the century. His vast photographic archive captures a city on the precipice of modernisation. Though his photographs of empty city streets were documentary in nature, the Surrealists admired their dreamlike quality and claimed Atget as one of their own despite his protestations. They believed any photograph could shed its original context and intent when viewed with a surrealist sensibility. Atget’s photograph of mannequins peering out of a shop window appealed to the movement by embodying the uncanny valley, where the human likeness of a nonhuman entity evokes both affinity and discomfort in viewers.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Florence Henri (Swiss born United States, 1893-1982)
Composition
1932, printed 1972
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Dr. Joe B. Massey in honor of Maria L. Kelly

Florence Henri is well known for her manipulations of light and form that create complex, surrealist scenes. She used angled mirrors to frame, obscure, and replicate portions of scenes to dissolve a sense of perspective and space, as seen in this still life comprising mirrors, pears, and an image of the sea. After only one semester studying under László Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus in 1927, Henri shifted her focus from painting to photography and began using various experimental techniques such as photomontage, multiple exposures, photograms, and negative printing.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Barbara Kasten (American, b. 1936)
Construct NYC
1984
Dye destruction print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Lucinda W. Bunnen for the Bunnen Collection
© Barbara Kasten

Barbara Kasten’s art is as much about the process of setting up innovative still life scenes as it is about the photographs she makes of them. Her Constructs series focuses on large-scale complex assemblages that she builds in her studio using a wide variety of materials, including painted wood, plaster, mirrors, screens, and fibers. Her work is not digitally altered; instead, she complicates the scene using mirrors and light, much in the tradition of Florence Henri, whose photograph is also on view in the exhibition.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Manipulations

This final section features photographers from the New Vision period to the present day who experiment with physically manipulating photographs. Through approaches such as double exposure, photomontage, surface alteration, and multilayering, they challenge and expand our perceptions of reality. The artworks in this section prioritise the creative process through labour, intention, intervention, and theatricality.

Double exposures is the process of photographing multiple images with the same negative within the camera, resulting in layered images that often provide a frenetic, multifaceted view of a scene. In contrast to the in-camera process of double exposure, photomontage combines separate images in the darkroom to produce a final photograph that emphasises the image’s artifice and absurdity. Physically disrupting the surface of photographs with alterations such as adding unnatural colour, drawing connections, stitching into prints, or inscribing texts augments the visual experience and offers emotional and narrative depth. Finally, whether through ancient visual techniques like the camera obscure or new technologies like digital screens, these artists create enigmatic scenes by layering and physically transforming subject, composition, and image.

Wall text from the exhibition

Barbara Morgan (American, 1900-1992)
Protest
1940
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase

Charles Swedlund (American, b. 1935)
31 St. Beach
c. 1955
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, gift of Steven Nordman
© Charles Swedlund

Jerry Uelsmann (American, 1934-2022)
Untitled
1964
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from a friend of the Museum

Lucinda Bunnen (American, 1930-2022)
Untitled
1974
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the Lawrence and Alfred Fox Foundation for the Ralph K. Uhry Collection
© Lucinda Bunnen

Duane Michals (American, 1932-2026)
Untitled
1989
From the Indomitable Spirit Portfolio
Gelatin silver print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Paul Mpagi Sepuya (American, b. 1982)
Studio (0X5A8180)
2021
Archival pigment print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the Donald and Marilyn Keough Family Foundation
© Paul Mpagi Sepuya

Noémie Goudal (French, b. 1984)
Phoenix V
2021
Dye coupler print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase through funds provided by patrons of Collectors Evening 2023

Noémie Goudal visualises “deep time” (geological history of the planet) and paleoclimatology (study of past climates) to challenge our perception of the world. Referring to the ancient continental split two billion years ago that formed South America and Africa, this image features the Phoenix atlantica, a palm tree that grows on both sides of the Atlantic. Goudal arranged strips of photographic prints of the palms made on one continent in front of the physical palms on the other and rephotographed the scene. The resulting image interweaves the two continents, creating a glitchy, kaleidoscopic view meant to unsettle our sense of stability and the constancy of the planet.

Text from the High Museum of Art website

Naima Green (American, b. 1992)
It Lingers Sweetly
2022
Pigmented inkjet print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta, purchase with funds from the LGBTQIA+ Photography Centennial Initiative

Naima Green’s practice centres connection and collaboration to cast a tender lens on her own queer community of colour. Her lyrical portraits take shape in intimate domestic spaces and airy outdoor environments that embody havens for the people in those spaces. Through double exposure and serial photographs, she provides what she calls “multiple entry points” into a moment in time, translating movements and emotions into a single image. She explains her interest in double exposure “as a means of capturing things that can’t be held in just one way … ,” allowing her to “play with loosening the narrative and letting go of some control.”

Text from the High Museum of Art website

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Exhibition: ‘Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany’ at Fondazione Prada, Milan

Exhibition dates: 3rd April – 14th July, 2025

Curator: Susanne Pfeffer

Heinrich Riebesehl (German, 1938-2010) 'Menschen Im Fahrstuhl, 20.11.1969' [People in the Elevator, 20.11.1969] 1969 from the exhibition 'Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany' at Fondazione Prada, Milan, April - July, 2025

Heinrich Riebesehl (German, 1938-2010)
Menschen Im Fahrstuhl, 20.11.1969 [People in the Elevator, 20.11.1969]
1969
Gelatin silver print, printed 2007
Kicken Berlin
© Heinrich Riebesehl, by SIAE 2025

Once more, with feeling

“Typology remains a highly challenging and complex notion. It operates in a paradoxical regime: on the one hand, this approach can lead to a systematic recording of people and objects based on extreme objectivity; on the other hand, typology corresponds to an individual and arbitrary choice, revealing itself as a disturbing and potentially subversive act.” (Press release)

Objective / subjective
Pattern / randomness
Isolation / extinction
Morphology / mutation
Specific / anonymous
Repetition / difference
Same / other
Structure / creativity
Orientation / disorientation
Universal / individual
Reality / imagination
Documentation / disruption
Omnipresent / unique
Exact / imprecise
Composed / emotional
Staged / snapshot
Concept / feeling
Formal / intuitive
Ritual / subversion
Collaboration / resistance

Et cetera, et cetera…

Inherent in one is the other.

Every photo within a Becher grid contains its own difference.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Fondazione Prada for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Let’s not beat around the bush. Despite protestations to the contrary (appeals to the objectivity of the image, eschewing entirely the aspects of beauty, emotion and opinion; the rigorous frontality of the individual images giving them the simplicity of diagrams, while their density of detail offers encyclopaedic richness) these are subjective images for all their objective desire. The paradox is the more a photographer strives for objectivity, the more ego drops away, the more the work becomes their own: subjective, beautiful, emotive.

Marcus Bunyan commenting on the exhibition Bernd and Hilla Becher: Mines and Mills – Industrial Landscapes at Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich, February, 2012

“What happens in the case of mutation? Consider the example of the genetic code. Mutation normally occurs when some random event (for example, a burst of radiation or a coding error) disrupts an existing pattern and something else is put in its place instead. Although mutation disrupts pattern, it also presupposes a morphological standard against which it can be measured and understood as mutation. We have seen that in electronic textuality, the possibility for mutation within the text are enhanced and heightened by long coding chains. We can now understand mutation in more fundamental terms. Mutation is critical because it names the bifurcation point at which the interplay between pattern and randomness causes the system to evolve in a new direction. It reveals the productive potential of randomness that is also recognized within information theory when uncertainty is seen as both antagonistic and intrinsic to information.

We are now in a position to understand mutation as a decisive event in the psycholinguistics of information. Mutation is the catastrophe in the pattern / randomness dialectic analogous to castration in the presence / absence dialectic. It marks a rupture of pattern so extreme that the expectation of continuous replication can in longer be sustained. But as with castration, this only appears to be a disruption located at a specific moment. The randomness to which mutation testifies is implicit in the very idea of pattern, for only against the background of nonpattern can pattern emerge. Randomness is the contrasting term that allows pattern to be understood as such.”

Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999, pp. 30-33

Heinrich Riebesehl (German, 1938-2010) 'Menschen Im Fahrstuhl, 20.11.1969' [People in the Elevator, 20.11.1969] 1969

In the series Menschen Im Fahrstuhl, 20.11.1969 (People in the elevator, 20.11.1969) shot in 1969, Heinrich Riebesehl conceptualised his interest in the photographic portrait. The portraits of the workers of the Hannoversche Presse (a daily newspaper in Hanover) – taken inside an elevator with a remotely operated small-format camera – are dated and numbered in sequential order: Riebesehl dispensed with a title or a more detailed description of the subjects portrayed. By omitting distinctive elements from the images, such as the profession or age of the subjects, he made the situation the key factor in the shots. In fact, the images are studies of the behaviors of people in that particular space, their body languages and gazes. Riebesehl knew that environment very well, because he had worked for a long time as a photojournalist, before turning to conceptual art photography.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing at left Bernd and Hiller Becher’s Hochöfen (Blast furnaces) 1970-1989; and at right, Candida Höfer’s Bibliotheque Nationale de France XXIII 1997

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944) 'Bibliotheque Nationale de France XXIII' 1997 from the exhibition 'Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany' at Fondazione Prada, Milan, April - July, 2025

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Bibliotheque Nationale de France XXIII
1997
Inkjet print
© Candida Höfer, Cologne

In the photographs of libraries in London, Paris, and New York, which at first glance appear to be technically scientific records, Candida Höfer manages to capture something that is not visible: ingenuity. The libraries’ rooms have high ceilings, and the rows of seats are neatly arranged. In their impressiveness, they reflect the architecture of the 19th-century conception of knowledge and science, typical of the dominant nations of the time because of their commercial and colonial power. The objective nature of the deserted spaces, precisely in how they seem to be neutral to the individual needs of the students, suggests something in the image that could hardly be less objective: the possibility for intellectual exchange that these spaces promise and deliver in Höfer’s photographs.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Candida Höfer (German, b. 1944)
Zoologischer Garten Washington DC IV
1992
Inkjet print
© Candida Höfer, by SIAE 2025/VG BildKunst, Bonn 2025

In Candida Höfer’s photographs shot in zoos, the animals document a specific form of loneliness in modern times. In these images, the lines of development of two disciplines collide. Not only in the photographs, but also in reality, they function independently of each other: modern architecture and behavioural research. Modern architecture has become established in zoological gardens but has never considered the animal and its needs. Based on the knowledge gained from behavioural research, by choosing to portray iconic large mammals such as giraffes, lions, and polar bears, Höfer has represented the dilemma of a world in which entire species are threatened with extinction and in which zoos see themselves as a kind of ‘Noah’s Ark.’

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Wassertürme (Water towers) 1966-1986

Bernd and Hilla Becher (German) Bernd Becher (German, 1931-2007) Hilla Becher (German, 1934-2015) 'Wassertürme (Water towers)' 1966-1986 from the exhibition 'Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany' at Fondazione Prada, Milan, April - July, 2025

Bernd and Hilla Becher (German)
Bernd Becher (German, 1931-2007)
Hilla Becher (German, 1934-2015)
Wassertürme (Water towers)
1966-1986
Leeds, GB, 1966
Hasselt, B, 1985
Newton le Willows, GB, 1966
Beaufays/Liège, B, 1979
Kwaadmechelen, B, 1971
Padova, I, 1986
Outreau/Boulogne, F, 1973
Primasens, Saarland, D, 1980
Mesnil-Val, F, 1972
9 gelatin silver prints
© Estate Bernd & Hilla Becher, represented by Max Becher, courtesy of Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – Bernd & Hilla Becher Archive, Cologne, 2025

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing the work of Thomas Struth

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing the work of Thomas Struth with at left, Musée du Louvre IV Paris, 1989

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Musée du Louvre IV
Paris, 1989
Colour photograph on C-print
© Thomas Struth / Courtesy ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe

In his practice, Thomas Struth demonstrates meticulous attention to the architectural environment, as well as to people and objects. In his large-format colour series Museum Photographs (1989-1992), Struth captures anonymous individuals and crowds gazing at artworks in museums. A significant example is Louvre 4, Paris 1989, in which the artist photographs from behind a group of viewers standing in front of Théodore Géricault’s The Raft of the Medusa (1819). Often made with a large-format camera, his images reflect what Struth calls “exact vision”: the framing must not conceal anything or suggest secret content, thus resulting in an enigmatic outcome.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing Andreas Gursky’s Paris, Montparnasse 1993

Andreas Gursky’s large-format work, Paris, Montparnasse (1993) has become an iconic example of his work. It depicts the Maine-Montparnasse II block of flats, located on Rue Commandant-Mouchotte in Paris and built between 1959 and 1964 on a design by French architect Jean Dubuisson. This is one of the first images that Gursky created using digital post-production. In real life, the building does not look the way it appears in the image: using a digital editing process, Gursky transformed the façade into a game of differences and repetitions by processing the windows. In fact, by reiterating forms that are always identical, he produced a seemingly infinite number of them, with colour variations that are activated by a calculated dynamic.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing Andreas Gursky’s 99 Cent 1999

In 99 Cent (1999), Andreas Gursky photographed supermarket shelves using the same formal scheme used in Paris, Montparnasse (1993). The shelves crammed with everyday products such as detergents represent the inexhaustible flow of goods in the global system of production and distribution. Gursky’s work conveys a feeling of disorientation generated by the excessive stimuli and details typical of a shelf in a hypermarket.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
99 Cent
1999 (remastered 2009)
Inkjet print

“Typologien” is an extensive study dedicated to 20th-century German photography. The exhibition, hosted within Podium, the central building of the Milan headquarters, is curated by Susanne Pfeffer, art historian and director of the MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST, Frankfurt.

The project attempts to apply the principle of “typology,” which originated in 17th- and 18th-century botany to categorise and study plants, and appeared in photography in the early 1900s, affirming itself in Germany throughout the 20th century. Paradoxically, the given formal principle allows for unexpected convergences of German artists spanning different generations and the manifestation of their individual approaches.

The exhibition path will follow a typological rather than a chronological order, bringing together more than 600 photographic works by 25 established and lesser-known artists essential for recounting a century of German photography, including Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sibylle Bergemann, Karl Blossfeldt, Ursula Böhmer, Christian Borchert, Margit Emmrich, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Isa Genzken, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Lotte Jacobi, Jochen Lempert, Simone Nieweg, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Heinrich Riebesehl, Thomas Ruff, August Sander, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Thomas Struth, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rosemarie Trockel, Umbo (Otto Umbehr), and Marianne Wex. A system of suspended walls will create geometric partitions in the exhibition space, forming unexpected connections between artistic practices that differ from each other, but are united by a common principle or intention of classification.

As stated by Susanne Pfeffer, “Only through juxtaposition and direct comparison is it possible to find out what is individual and what is universal, what is normative or real. Differences are evidence of the abundance of nature and the imagination of humans: the fern, the cow, the human being, the ear; the bus stop, the water tower, the stereo system, the museum. The typological comparison allows differences and similarities to emerge and the specifics to be grasped. Unknown or previously unperceived things about nature, the animal, or the object, about place and time become visible and recognisable.”

In photography, employing typologies means affirming an equivalence between images and the absence of hierarchies in terms of represented subjects, motifs, genres, and sources. Despite this, typology remains a highly challenging and complex notion. It operates in a paradoxical regime: on the one hand, this approach can lead to a systematic recording of people and objects based on extreme objectivity; on the other hand, typology corresponds to an individual and arbitrary choice, revealing itself as a disturbing and potentially subversive act.

The hypothesis that photography plays a key role not only in fixing distinctive phenomena but also in organising and classifying a plurality of visible manifestations remains a vital force in today’s artistic efforts to navigate the complexity of our social and cultural realities. With the spread of digital imagery and practices, the concept of typology continues to be questioned and re-defined by contemporary photographers and artists.

As underlined by Susanne Pfeffer, “The unique, the individual, seems to have been absorbed into a global mass, the universality of things is omnipresent. The Internet allows typologies to be created in a matter of seconds. And yet this is precisely when it seems important – to artists – to take a closer look.” As further explained by Pfeffer, “When the present seems to have abandoned the future, we need to observe the past more closely. When everything seems to be shouting at you and becoming increasingly brutal, it is important to take a quiet pause and use the silence to see and think clearly. When differences are not seen as something other, but turned into something that divides us, it is crucial to notice what we have in common. Typologies allow us to identify remarkable similarities and subtle differences.”

Text from the Fondazione Prada website

Typologien | Fondazione Prada Milano

An extensive study dedicated to 20th-century German photography. “Typologien” attempts to apply the principle of “typology,” which originated in 17th- and 18th-century botany to categorise and study plants, and appeared in photography in the early 1900s, affirming itself in Germany throughout the 20th century.

The exhibition, hosted within Podium, the central building of the Milan headquarters, is curated by Susanne Pfeffer, art historian and director of the MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST, Frankfurt.

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing the work of Ursula Schulz-Dornburg

Ursula Schulz-Dornburg (German, b. 1938)
Transit Sites-Armenia-Erevan-Ararat
2001
Gelatin silver print on Forte paper
© Ursula Schulz-Dornburg

Ursula Schulz-Dornburg was visiting convents and monasteries in Armenia when she happened to come across one of these unique bus stops, partly futuristic and partly surreal. From 1997 to 2011, she portrayed numerous bus stops, often in very remote locations. In a country that was experiencing a dramatic transition, from being part of the Soviet Union to its new status as an independent republic, these bus stops look like the remnants of a utopian socialism, which in Schulz-Dornburg’s images are kept alive mainly by women and children. The photographer said she was so impressed by the dignity of those women waiting at the bus stop, who even in the most extreme poverty looked as though they were on their way to the Opera, that she asked their permission to photograph them. What emerged was a document of a quiet life that manages with dignity to deal with even the harshest adversity.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Installation view of the exhibition ‘Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany’ at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing at left, flower photographs by Thomas Struth; and at right, Andreas Gursky’s Untitled XVIII 2015 (below)

Andreas Gursky (German, b. 1955)
Untitled XVIII
2015
Inkjet print
Atelier Andreas Gursky

Unlike works such as Paris, Montparnasse (1993), in the Untitled series he produced between 2015 and 2016, Andreas Gursky depicted rows of tulips without providing a title or location for the pictures. Viewed from a distance, the photographs are reminiscent of Abstract Expressionist paintings, but even looking at them at close range, the lushly blooming flowers are undiscernible. Living in Düsseldorf, close to the Dutch border, Gursky is familiar with the intensively cultivated Dutch tulip crops, where no unwanted insect or worm would possibly be allowed to spoil the bulbs. The sterility of industrial flower production, far from being harmless and healthy, is captured by Gursky in images that, in turn, are neither reassuring nor pleasant.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing the flower photographs of Thomas Struth with at left, Small Closed Sunflower, No. 18, Winterthur 1992 (below); and at third left, Single Red Lily – No. 51, Düsseldorf (Botanischer Garten) 1993 (below)

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Small Closed Sunflower, No. 18, Winterthur
1992
Colour photograph on C-print
© Thomas Struth / Courtesy ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, Karlsruhe

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Single Red Lily – No. 51, Düsseldorf (Botanischer Garten)
1993
C-print
Viehof Collection
© Thomas Struth / Courtesy Viehof Collection, Mönchengladbach

A student of the artist Gerhard Richter and later of the photographer Bernd Becher at the Art Düsseldorf Academy from 1973 to 1980, Thomas Struth habitually works in thematic cycles centered around museums, flowers, and portraits of families and passers-by. The “exact vision” – the intention underpinning Struth’s photography – can be seen in both the portraits of two cornflowers shoot in Düsseldorf and the image of a red lily in the city’s Botanical Garden. Struth notes down the name or address of the site where he took the photograph, as in the case of the flower of a hollyhock portrayed in Düsseldorf’s Nordpark. This is to evoke the poetry of the place and provide an exact account of the plants’ origin, preserving the authenticity of the shots without digitally altering them.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing the work of Hiller Becher

Hilla Becher (German, 1934-2015)
Eichenblatt [Oak Leaf]
1965
Gelatin silver print
© Estate Bernd & Hilla Becher, represented by Max Becher, courtesy Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – Bernd & Hilla Becher Archive, Cologne, 2025

In terms of the objectivity of the approach, Hilla Becher’s 1965 photographic studies of an oak leaf, a cypress branch, and a ginkgo leaf are in keeping with the series on types of industrial buildings that she made with her husband Bernd Becher. Thematically, however, these studies represent a sort of return to the studies of branches and shoots made years earlier by Karl Blossfeldt. Unlike Blossfeldt’s images, the leaves, particularly the poplar leaves, are not uniformly lit. The shadowy areas cannot be clearly seen with the naked eye even on close and objective observation. One could say that nature has penetrated the technique, disappearing.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing the work of Karl Blossfeldt

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Adiantum pedatum, haarfarn, junge, noch eingerollte Wedel [Maidenhair fern, young, still curled fronds]
Nd
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Berlin University of Arts, Archive – Karl Blossfeldt Collection in cooperation with Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne

The young, still curling fronds of an ‘Unspecified fern’ are a kind of introduction to the themes that Karl Blossfeldt explored, and his working methods. Faced with a seemingly infinite variety of natural forms, the photographer tried to find an order by using tools borrowed from scientific botany. Blossfeldt collected plant samples tirelessly in and around Berlin, dried them, and enlarged those details not visible to the naked eye. However, the photographer was seeking something different from the aims of botanical research. This is already revealed by the title of the first volume, a publication of his photographs of plants – Urformen der Kunst (Art Forms in Plants, 1928). Right from the title, he explicitly refers to the model he used for the book’s conception: Ernst Haeckel’s Kunstformen in der Natur (Art Forms in Nature), published in 1924 and now a classic. Therefore, Blossfeldt sought archetypal formal models in nature, such as the fronds of the fern.

In his search for a primal form of nature that could then be shaped into art according to the natural model – as in the case of the curled fronds of
the fern – Karl Blossfeldt applied the systematic method specific to botany with a kind of exterior mimicry. He moved from the frond of an unidentified fern, in other words, not yet classified according to an order, to a fern that could at least be identified within a botanical classification. The frond of the order Polypodiales certainly has typological similarities to all the fronds photographed by Blossfeldt, but it remains a case apart in that it cannot be classified in any of the orders in which the other ferns are classified. However, this level of identification is a relevant indication: these very diverse plants in fact number about 9000 known species, and probably many more yet to be identified. Moreover, identifying their species is often only possible for a few specialists, and is even more difficult given the variety of forms that ferns take during their development.

The curled fronds of some ferns from the Osmundaceae family, royal ferns, with their botanical classification, confirm one of the fundamental intentions of Karl Blossfeldt’s studies: only by carefully analyzing the structure of a plant can one fully understand its natural form. He developed his approach opposite to that of the Jugendstil, the artistic movement – a variation of French Art Nouveau and Italian Liberty – that stylized plant forms and conceived of them primarily as ornamental elements. Blossfeldt was not interested in criticism or rejection of the ornamental, but in a radical reconfiguration of it. This could only be achieved by thoroughly studying natural forms.

Three still-curled fronds of a specimen of bracken fern – scientific name Hypolepidaceae – on the one hand, appear denaturalised, because Karl Blossfeldt focused his lens on the detail, leaving out the natural context. But on the other hand, they reveal a scrupulous observation of the plant world. By nature, in fact, fronds develop according to a strict formal principle – no natural form is purely random – and yet they eventually differ from one another. The fronds of ferns could appear as decalcomanias, given that in Blossfeldt’s representation they take on an almost mechanical quality for the observer. The emphasis on differences in resemblance, which Blossfeldt achieved more or less consciously by repeating the leaf motif in differently shaped ferns, can be considered one of the main aesthetic innovations of his photography.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing the work of Marianne Wex with at left, Let’s Take Back Our Space: ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures 1977-2018 (below); and at right, Arm and Leg Positions, Lying on the Ground 1977/2018

With the photographic project Let’s Take Back our Space, which resulted in a book published in 1979 with the subtitle “‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures,” Marianne Wex produced one of the seminal works in 1970s feminist art studies. Starting with a scrupulous observation of the body influenced by the method of structuralism, a scientific approach that studies a whole by breaking it down into elements and units, Wex took hundreds of photographs arranged in specific thematic sections devoted, for example, to specific leg and arm positions. Wex succeeded in showing how apparently natural body postures are actually the result of centuries of social and cultural structures, not a ‘natural’ or genetic predisposition. Her photographs capture movements, postures, and gestures, documenting habits of the body that have been taught and passed down for generations, shaping the behaviour of men and women according to patriarchal expectations.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Marianne Wex (German, 1937-2020)
Let’s Take Back Our Space: ‘Female’ and ‘Male’ Body Language as a Result of Patriarchal Structures
1977-2018
Inkjet print

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing photographs from Wolfgang Tillmans’ series Concorde 1997

In 1997, Wolfgang Tillmans photographed the Concorde, a supersonic passenger plane, in flight during landing and take-off. For him, the plane represented one of the last remaining inventions of the 1960s technological utopia. With its futuristic shape, supersonic speed, and the formidable roar it made during take-off and landing, the plane fascinated generations of technology enthusiasts. Today, the Concorde is a thing of the past and, together with the Titanic, epitomises more of a technological shock than a promise in the history of technology. These photographs reveal one of the aspects that Tillmans wants to highlight: they are symbols of “a super-modern anachronism” that ultimately left nothing behind but air pollution and environmental destruction.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Wolfgang Tillmans (German, b. 1968)
Concorde L449-21
1997
Inkjet print
Courtesy of Galerie Buchholz

Fondazione Prada presents Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany, an extensive study dedicated to 20-century German photography, at its Milan venue from 3 April to 14 July 2025. The exhibition, hosted within Podium, the central building of the Milan headquarters, is curated by Susanne Pfeffer, art historian and director of the MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST, Frankfurt.

The exhibition attempts to apply the principle of “typology,” which originated in 17th- and 18th-century botany to categorise and study plants, and appeared in photography in the early 1900s, affirming itself in Germany throughout the 20th century. Paradoxically, the given formal principle allows for unexpected convergences of German artists spanning different generations and the manifestation of their individual approaches.

The exhibition path follows a typological rather than a chronological order, bringing together more than 600 photographic works by 25 artists essential for recounting over a century of German photography. The exhibition features photographs by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sibylle Bergemann, Karl Blossfeldt, Ursula Böhmer, Christian Borchert, Margit Emmrich, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Isa Genzken, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Lotte Jacobi, Jochen Lempert, Simone Nieweg, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Heinrich Riebesehl, Thomas Ruff, August Sander, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Thomas Struth, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rosemarie Trockel, Umbo (Otto Umbehr), and Marianne Wex. The project forms unexpected connections between artistic practices that differ from each other but are united by a common principle or intention of classification.

In photography, employing typologies means affirming an equivalence between images and the absence of hierarchies in terms of represented subjects, motifs, genres, and sources.

Despite this, typology remains a highly challenging and complex notion. It operates in a paradoxical regime: on the one hand, this approach can lead to a systematic recording of people and objects based on extreme objectivity; on the other hand, typology corresponds to an individual and arbitrary choice, revealing itself as a disturbing and potentially subversive act.

The hypothesis that photography plays a key role not only in fixing distinctive phenomena but also in organizing and classifying a plurality of visible manifestations remains a vital force in today’s artistic efforts to navigate the complexity of our social and cultural realities. With the spread of digital imagery and practices, the concept of typology continues to be questioned and re-defined by contemporary photographers and artists.

As underlined by Susanne Pfeffer, “The unique, the individual, seems to have been absorbed into a global mass, the universality of things is omnipresent. The Internet allows typologies to be created in a matter of seconds. In this very precise moment – it seems even more important to follow the artists’ gaze and look closely.” As further explained by Pfeffer, “When the present seems to have abandoned the future, we need to look closer at the past. When everything seems to be shouting at you and becoming increasingly brutal, it is important to take a quiet pause and use the silence to see and think clearly. When differences are no longer perceived seen as something other but are transformed into elements of division, we have to recognize what we have in common. Typologies allow us to identify undeniable similarities and subtle differences.”

In the early 20th century, Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) was one of the first artists to transfer the classification system used in botanical studies to photography. His vast and detailed plant atlas represented a foundational moment for German Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity). This artistic and photographic movement emerged in the 1920s during the Weimar Republic and promoted the importance of categories and distinctions and the remarkable ability of photography as a medium to explore the very idea of typology.

Another pioneering figure was August Sander (1876-1964), who published his photo book Antlitz der Zeit (Face of Our Time) in 1929, at the time excerpted from his landmark project Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts (People of the 20th Century). Described by Walter Benjamin as a “training atlas” of physiognomic perception, Antlitz der Zeit was an ambitious attempt to portray the diversity and the structure of German society using class, gender, age, occupation, and social background as distinct categories of a rigid and neutral classification system.

Both Karl Blossfeldt’s and August Sander’s typologies were fundamental for Bernd Becher (1931-2007) and Hilla Becher (1934-2015) when, at the end of the fifties, they began an enormous and lifelong documentation and preservation project of industrial architecture. In 1971, they described the “industrial constructions” as “objects, not motifs”. They stated that “the information we want to provide is only created through the sequence, through the juxtaposition of similar or different objects with the same function”. Their black-and-white monuments, or “anonymous sculptures”, isolated against a monochromatic sky, centered, framed in the same format and arranged in a block, became an essential reference for American and European Post-Minimalist and Conceptual artists. They also represented a rich heritage for younger generations of German artists and photographers, such as Andreas Gursky (b. 1955), Candida Höfer (b. 1944), Simone Nieweg (b. 1962), Thomas Ruff (b. 1958) and Thomas Struth (b. 1954), who studied at the Academy in Düsseldorf in the class led by Bernd and Hilla Becher from 1976.

Hans-Peter Feldmann (1941-2023), internationally recognised for his fundamental contribution to conceptual art, traced a complementary trajectory in German photography. In his works, he documented everyday objects and historical events and combined deadpan humor with a systematic approach to accumulating, cataloguing, and rearranging elements of contemporary visual culture. In his series, he invented personal yet very political typologies and adopted a deliberate snapshot approach with a commercial aesthetic. For his work Alle Kleider einer Frau (All the Clothes of a Woman, 1975), he took 35mm-format photographs of underwear, hosiery, T-shirts, dresses, trousers, skirts, socks, and shoes, all hanging on hangers on the wall or laid on dark fabric. With his project Die Toten 1967-1993 (The Dead 1967-1993, 1996-1998), he paid homage to individuals murdered in the context of the political and terroristic movements in Post-War Germany. As pointed out by Susanne Pfeffer, “With his typologies, he emphasised the equal value of all photographs, their image sources and motifs, and underscored the de-hierarchisation inherent in every typology.”

In his apparently random collection of found, personal or pornographic images, press clippings, and historical photos of Nazi concentration camps, the Red Army Faction and German reunification, a “private album” named Atlas (1962 – present), Gerhard Richter (b. 1932) seemed to deny or challenge the very idea of typology. Instead, he took the principle of equivalence between images and their trivialization process to the limits, creating a jarring contrast and an acute awareness of a repressed collective memory.

In the seventies and eighties, in a dialectic relationship with the artistic lessons of the Bechers, Gursky, Höfer, Ruff, and Struth progressively abandoned the radicalism and black- and-white purism of their professors. They explored the colorful dominance of banality in their series of individual or family portraits, monumental and detailed city views, and spectacular documentation of cultural or tourist sites, generating a plethora of contemporary and conflicting typologies.

In the late seventies and early eighties, multimedia artist Isa Genzken (b. 1948) engaged in a direct dialogue with the photographic medium. In 1979, she created a series entitled Hi-Fi that featured advertisements of avant-garde Japanese stereo equipment, organising them in an imaginary commercial catalog. The second series entitled Ohr (Ear) (1980) depicted, in large-scale colour close-ups, the ears of random women Genzken photographed on the streets of New York City. She transferred the traditional portrait genre to physiognomic detail and ironically investigating the absolute singularity and infinite individual differentiation the photographic portrait can record.

An illustrated book, published by Fondazione Prada and designed by Zak Group, accompanies the exhibition “Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany”. It includes an introduction by Miuccia Prada, President and Director of Fondazione Prada, a text by the exhibition curator Susanne Pfeffer and three essays by renowned international art historians and curators Benjamin Buchloh, Tom Holert, and Renée Mussai.

Press release from Fondazione Prada

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing the work of August Sander

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Sekretärin beim Westdeutschen Rundfunk in Köln [Secretary at West German Radio in Cologne]
1931-1950s
Gelatin silver print
Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur – August Sander Archive, Cologne; SIAE, Roma, 2025

The series that August Sander dedicated to women is perhaps where the idea of categorising an archetype or social type shows the cracks most visibly. Whether it is an architect’s companion, an industrialist’s wife, or a high society lady, in Sander’s images the individuality of the female subject, in dress and posture, always prevails over type. And even when the subjects display characteristics that could be traced back to their class, origin, or occupation – such as the secretary who smokes – all the women depicted, from the sculptor to the photographer or the gym teacher, express ‘their own’ individuality. This is most evident when comparing the portraits of women with those of civil servants, whose gazes already show a serial uniformity associated with their positions.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Erich Sander for August Sander’s studio
Politischer Häftling [Political Prisoner]
1941-1944 (print date late 1940s)
Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts, 44a Politische Gefangene. [44a Political prisoners]
Gelatin silver print
Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne – August Sander Archive, Cologne; SIAE, Roma, 2025

In 1935, Erich Sander, August Sander’s son, was sensationally put on trial and sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment for subversive activities. He served most of his sentence in Siegburg Prison, where he worked as the prison’s photographer. Determined to continue his resistance activities even in prison, he did not limit himself to taking ‘official’ photographs. He convinced his fellow prisoners to show him the scars of torture and have their portraits taken. Those photographs seemed to him to be in line with his father’s work. He had learned his trade from his father and worked with him before his imprisonment. He stayed in close contact with his parents during his ten years of imprisonment, and through them, managed to get many of those images out of the prison, leaving a valuable record of Nazi atrocities. Due to a misdiagnosis and lack of medical treatment during his imprisonment, Erich Sander died in 1944, six months before the end of his sentence.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing photographs by Thomas Struth with at left, The Richter Family 1, Cologne 2002; and at right, The Consolandi Family, Milan 1996

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954) 'The Richter Family 1, Cologne' 2002 (installation view)

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
The Richter Family 1, Cologne (installation view)
2002
C-print
Courtesy of the artist

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
The Richter Family 1, Cologne
2002
C-print
Courtesy of the artist

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954) 'The Consolandi Family, Milan' 1996 (installation view)

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
The Consolandi Family, Milan (installation view)
1996
C-print
Courtesy of the artist

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing Thomas Ruff portraits

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
Porträt (Pia Stadtbäumer)
1988
C-print laminated on acrylic glass
MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST, Frankfurt
© Thomas Ruff, by SIAE 2025 Photo by Axel Schneider, Frankfurt am Main

Between 1977 and 1985, Thomas Ruff studied with Bernd Becher at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf, where he himself has been teaching photography since 2000. During the 1980s, he photographed people from his circle of acquaintances in a series of identically framed shots. With the subjects portrayed in a half-length pose against a neutral background, the images are striking for their unusually large size. Every detail, every pore, and every imperfection in the skin is visible in the faces of the subjects, whose names Ruff also provides. The strictness of the composition, the uniform lighting, and the impassive gaze of the people portrayed give the images an objective and neutral atmosphere. What formally appears detached and unemotional immediately raises questions about the subject portrayed: who is this person? What does he or she do in life? With this series, Ruff challenges the conventions of the traditional portrait, encouraging the viewer to question not only the identity of the subject, but also the role of the photographer and the meaning of the portrait itself.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Thomas Ruff (German, b. 1958)
Porträt (Simone Buch)
1988
C-print laminated on acrylic glass
MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST, Frankfurt
© Thomas Ruff, by SIAE 2025 Photo by Axel Schneider, Frankfurt am Main

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing at left, Jochen Lempert’s The Skins of Alca Impennis 1992-2022; and at right, Thomas Ruff’s Portrait of Pia Stadtbäumer and Portrait of Simone Buch both 1988

Jochen Lempert (German, b. 1958) 'The Skins of Alca Impennis' 1992-2022 (detail)

Jochen Lempert (German, b. 1958)
The Skins of Alca Impennis (detail)
1992-2022
Gelatin silver prints on Bartya paper
54 parts
Courtesy of Jochen Lempert, BQ, Berlin, and ProjecteSD, Barcelona

The fifty-four profiles of the Alca impennis (the great auk), a large flightless bird that became extinct after its last sighting in 1852, are part of a project that took Jochen Lempert more than a decade to complete. Using the same methods, Lempert photographed the profiles of many of the seventy-eight specimens of the Alca impennis preserved in natural history collections. Having become increasingly rare due to hunting, the Alca impennis was increasingly coveted by collectors, so the skins of this species fetched very high prices. The presence of such a large number of stuffed specimens in collections was therefore one of the causes of this species’ extinction.

Lempert’s portraits also hint at a more significant phenomenon. Very marked individual variations can be found in the appearance of individual specimens of a species, testifying to the great degree of differentiation within the species. Therefore, the concept of species, or its depiction in a scientific classification book, provides something akin to an ‘ideal type,’ rather than a true representation of the actual variety found in real life.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing the work of Rosemarie Trockel, Elena I & II, 1993/2025, Maculata I & II, 1993/2025, Mela I & II, 1993/2025

The portraits of the dogs Mela, Elena, and Maculata grew out of Rosemarie Trockel’s interest in animals and the relationship between animals and humans, a subject she has been working with for a long time. From the drawings of monkeys, which represent a kind of monument to the profound melancholy of primates kept in captivity by humans, to A House for Pigs and People / Ein Haus føur Schweine und Menschen created with Carsten Höller for documenta X in 1997, Trockel’s exploration of the relationship between humans and animals involves various forms of expression and themes. However, in this case, the double portraits of the three dogs, photographed frontally and in profile, indicate a further correlation. If “every animal is an artist,” as Trockel has stated, these portraits seem to call these roles into question: who directs and who stages who? Does the artist portray the dogs or do the dogs direct the artist?

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Installation view of the exhibition Typologien: Photography in 20th-century Germany at Fondazione Prada, Milan showing at left, the work of Ursula Böhmer and her series All Ladies – Cows in Europe, 1998-2011; and at right, the work of Isa Genzken and her series Ohr, 1980

Ursula Böhmer (German, b. 1965) 'Highland Grampians / Scotland [All Ladies – Cows in Europe]' 2011

Ursula Böhmer (German, b. 1965)
Highland Grampians / Scotland
2011
From the series All Ladies – Cows in Europe, 1998-2011
Gelatin silver print on Baryta paper
© Ursula Böhmer

Getting a cow to stand still in a frontal pose and look towards the camera, as Ursula Böhmer managed to do with a Highlander in the Grampian Mountains, is certainly not an easy task, but one that requires patience and trust, one of the prerequisites for this project. Between 1998 and 2011, Böhmer visited 25 European countries to photograph specimens of cattle breeds in the places where their breeding history began. These breeds, many of them at risk of extinction, had to be portrayed in their own environments in order to illustrate how these environments had influenced their appearance. What emerged was a series of images of docile animals portrayed in often harsh landscapes, which at the same time document the ongoing conditioning by the environment on the forms of life also in breeding conditions.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Isa Genzken (German, b. 1948)
Ohr
1980
Colour C-print in artist’s frame
Galerie Buchholz Courtesy the artist and Galerie Buchholz
© Isa Genzken, by SIAE 2025

In 1980, Isa Genzken took a series of close-ups of the ears of women she encountered on the streets of New York. The typical portraiture approach used in the photographs exalts and enhances the characteristics of the represented subject, on the one hand, but at the same time, with the anonymity of the immortalized figure, creates a contrast. In the course of the evolution of the human species, the ear has lost its value in terms of expressive power. While in many animal species ears still play an important role in expressing emotions, in the human being they are stiffly positioned at the sides of the head and no longer react to emotional states along with the facial muscles. Georg Simmel, a sociologist of the senses, sees the ear as merely a passive appendage in the human appearance. For Simmel, the ear is the selfish organ par excellence, which simply takes without giving. Genzken contradicts this verdict, because the ears she photographs, with all the ornaments attached, eloquently express individual differences.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Isa Genzken (German, b. 1948)
Front Operation
1979
B/w photograph
Generali Foundation Collection – Permanent Loan to the Museum der Moderne Salzburg
© Generali Foundation / Isa Genzken, by SIAE 2025

In her first institutional exhibition, presented at the Museum Haus Lange in Krefeld in 1979, alongside sculptures and drawings, Isa Genzken exhibited a photography series dedicated to the latest and most expensive Hi-Fi systems. She created it by cutting out ads for turntables and amplifiers from international magazines and then photographing them. As she told photographer Wolfgang Tillmans in an interview, those advertisements showcased some of the most advanced technology of the time, highlighting cutting-edge design. Genzken also stated that a sculpture should be at least as modern as those devices. Her photography series dedicated to Hi-Fi systems can therefore be interpreted as a conceptual and aesthetic investigation of whether or not her sculptures and works could be compared to the everyday beauty of a stereo system.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Sigmar Polke (German, 1941-2010)
Handschuhpalme (Glove palm tree)
1966
From the series … Höhere Wesen Befehlen, 1968 (… Higher beings Command, 1968)
13 stampe offset su carta artistica / 13 offset prints on art paper
MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST, Frankfurt am Main

Lotte Jacobi (American born Poland, 1896-1990)
Folkwang-Auriga-Verlag, Orch 152. Neottia nidus avis. Vogel-Nestwurz, einzelne Blüte [Bird’s-nest orchid, single flower]
c. 1930
Gelatin silver print
Berlinische Galerie – Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture
© Lotte Jacobi

Lotte Jacobi, known for her portraits of intellectuals including Martin Buber and W.E.B du Bois, artists such as Marc Chagall, and poets including Robert Frost and Vladimir Mayakovsky, created a series of plant portraits in 1930. Apart from the individual flowers of the Orchis latifolia, the broad-leaved helleborine or orchid, and Neottia nidus avis, the bird’s nest, she photographed an orchid in its entirety. The names of the plants, which Jacobi, like Karl Blossfeldt, makes explicit in the titles of the photographs, are an integral part of the unique poetics of the subjects. With her plant portraits, Jacobi followed in the tradition of the 1920s workers’ movement’s vision of nature. In fact, Jacobi was a member of the Vereinigung der Arbeiterfotografen Deutschlands (Union of German Labor Photographers), an organisation of photographers who documented the social life and struggles of the German working class.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
People on the Street, Düsseldorf 1974-78
1974-1978
Gelatin silver print
Atelier Thomas Struth, Berlin
© Thomas Struth

In his photography, Thomas Struth has always been interested in the streets, squares, and houses of cities that consciously or unconsciously shape our experience, as well as that of the passers-by who walk through them. The study People on the Street, Düsseldorf 1974-78 explores the movements and figures of individuals passing in front of the camera lens. The subjects are never shot at close range. While some facial features are blurred in movement, others are clearly visible. Even if they are differentiated by their jackets, coats, or bags, all the subjects have a directional gait in common. No one is simply ‘here’: they all have an intention, which each person pursues in their own way.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Umbo (Otto Umbehr) (German, 1902-1980)
Untitled (Kindergarten)
1928
Gelatin silver print
Berlinische Galerie – Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture, Berlin
Permanent loan from the Federal Republic of Germany represented by the Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media

Umbo – born Otto Umbehr – found his expressive tool in the camera in 1926. In the early 1920s he studied at the Bauhaus with the intention of becoming a painter, until Walter Gropius, the director of the Institute, expelled him from the school for improper conduct. He then found in photography the medium that allowed him to work with his distinctive play of light and shadow. Photographs such as Unheimliche Straße (Eerie Street, 1928), Am Strand (auch Strandleben) (On the beach [also beach life], 1930) and Ohne Titel (Kindergarten) (Untitled [Kindergarten], 1930) epitomize his artistic innovations. There is nothing random in these images: everything has been composed. Umbo’s photographs are the opposite of snapshots or shots that capture the emotion of a moment; they express a formal intent without overpowering reality. Therefore, with all their poetry, they retain an abstract component. What clearly surfaces in this primacy of composition is his connection to the Bauhaus philosophy, which emphasised design and structure over emotion or spontaneity.

Exhibition text from the Fondazione Prada by Cord Riechelmann

Fondazione Prada Milan
Largo Isarco 2, within the Podium spaces
20139 MILAN
Phone: +39 02 5666 2611

Opening hours:
Mon-Sun, 10am – 7pm

Fondazione Prada Milan website

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Exhibition: ‘Tata Ronkholz: Designed World. A Retrospective’ at the Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne in collaboration with VAN HAM Art Estate and Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf

Exhibition dates: 14th March – 13th July, 2025

Curator: Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Director of SK Stiftung Kultur

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Imbissstube Düsseldorf-Rath, Linienstraße 141 (Snack bar Düsseldorf-Rath, Linienstraße 141)
1977
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

The work of Tata Ronkholz belongs to the Düsseldorf School of Photography which refers to a group of photographers who studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in the mid 1970s with teachers Bernd and Hiller Becher – whose conceptual rationale for an objective excellence for art photography emerged from the German Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) modern realist movement of the 1920s.

“This [objective] conceptualisation opens up an expanded terrain of becoming for photography … The work of these artists is vital to an understanding of the place of photography within the observation, construction and taxonomy of contemporary culture and its pictorial representation.”1

Ronkholz’s photographs are images of infinite focus … where the attention of the photographer is tightly controlled as to the conceptualisation of the image and the constructed reality that is being re/presented.

Ronkholz was aware of the importance of these ephemeral structures, the importance of documenting them, these industrial gates, kiosks and small shops, which arise and then are gone. Here today, gone tomorrow (much like life itself). “These often small, sometimes freestanding structures, with their designs, surroundings, product offerings, and advertisements, serve as vivid testaments to everyday culture.”2

And testaments to the transitory nature of contemporary culture.

I love these photographs of everyday things for their clear seeing, their frontality, their directness, which allows the viewer to address a reality which might have passed them by as they walk the streets in a dream.

Look. Awake.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Marcus Bunyan commenting on the exhibition Photographs Become Pictures. The Becher Class at the Städel Museum, Frankfurt, April – August, 2017

2/ Text from the Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne website

Many thankx to Die Photographische Sammlung/ SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Palazzo dei Vescovi (Museo dell’Antico), Pistoia
1975
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Santa Maria Assunta, Dom, Volterra
1975
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

An exhibition by Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur in collaboration with the Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf and VAN HAM Art Estate

The artist and photographer Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) will be honoured in the spring with her first major retrospective. She is one of the first members of the class taught by Bernd Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Due to her early death Ronkholz’s work has long been recognised only partly even though her oeuvre reflects a profound and continuous engagement with multiple themes. Ronkholz is best known for her series of kiosks and small shops in the Rhineland and Ruhr area, which she began in 1977. These often small, sometimes freestanding structures, with their designs, surroundings, product offerings, and advertisements, serve as vivid testaments to everyday culture. Additionally, she created a photographic series documenting various industrial gates. Together with her fellow student Thomas Struth, she documented Düsseldorf’s Rheinhafen district from 1979 to 1981 before its transformation into the so-called “Medienhafen”.

The exhibition will also feature surprising insights into Ronkholz’s early works as a freelance product designer and photographs of architectural forms taken in Italy. An accompanying catalog will be published.

Text from the Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne website

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
ECT. Rotterdam / Prinses Beatrixhaven, Reeweg
1977
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Trinkhalle, Ratingen, Volkardeyer Straße 25
1977
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Trinkhalle, Düsseldorf, Sankt-Franziskus-Straße 107
1977
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Imbissstube Köln-Mülheim, Berliner Straße 120 (Snack bar Cologne-Mülheim, Berliner Straße 120)
1979
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Rheinhafen (Berger Hafen v. d. VHS), Düsseldorf
1979
From the series Rheinhafen Düsseldorf 1979-1981
© Thomas Struth

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Getreidespeicher, Rhenus seitlich (Grain silo, Rhenus side)
1979
From the series Rheinhafen Düsseldorf 1979-1981
© Thomas Struth

Thomas Struth (German, b. 1954)
Zollhafen (Customs port)
1979
From the series Rheinhafen Düsseldorf 1979-1981
© Thomas Struth

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Lagerhalle mit Löwenwappen (Warehouse with lion crest)
1979
From the series Rheinhafen Düsseldorf 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

This retrospective is the first comprehensive tribute to the versatile work of Tata Ronkholz (born 1940 in Krefeld; died 1997 in Hürth-Kendenich, née Maria Juliana Roswitha Tölle). The exhibition features works by the photographer, product designer, and interior architect who was one of the early students of the Becher class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Among her fellow students were renowned artists such as Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff, Thomas Struth, and Petra Wunderlich. Ronkholz’s estate, acquired in 2011 by VAN HAM Art Estate in Cologne, forms the basis of the exhibition alongside the holdings of Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf. Significant contributions have also been made from the in-house collections of Die Photographische Sammlung/ SK Stiftung Kultur and from other lenders.

The retrospective finds its stylistically fitting context in the Photographic Collection, with the on-site Bernd and Hilla Becher Archive. Ronkholz’s works follow in the tradition of objective, documentary photography – a tradition decisively shaped by the Bechers. Her work is characterised by clear compositions, a serial approach, and a documentary focus on architectural structures and everyday architectures. Using her large-format camera, she produced sharply defined and realistic photographs in which the subject matter, rather than the photographer’s personal signature, takes center stage. Her work is predominantly in black and white, although color images also appear, demonstrating her ambition to engage with the emerging artistic colour photography in Germany during the 1970s and 80s.

Tata Ronkholz became known for her appealing series of kiosks and small shops that capture typical moments of urban everyday culture. These were photographed between 1977 and 1985, particularly in neighborhoods of Cologne and Düsseldorf, in the Ruhr area, as well as in Leverkusen and Krefeld. For example, the kiosk in Cologne-Nippes – with its ice cream and newspaper advertisements and vending machines for chewing gum and cigarettes – is captured in a straightforward, unadorned manner that is as amusing and engaging as the boutique in Cologne-Mülheim on Berliner Straße 120, where, according to the store sign, alongside clothing, “Third World records” were also offered. Many details in the images evoke personal memories – perhaps a shopping trip to a Turkish grocery store or an ice cream sundae at Eiscafé Fortuna. The photographs illustrate the transformation of product offerings, decoration, and advertising in urban spaces. The depicted details remind viewers of their own surroundings and provide insight into the shopping habits of past decades.

In this way, the subjects in Tata Ronkholz’s work indirectly testify to social, cultural, and economic change while also revealing how the personal tastes of shop owners influenced the design of these small retail outlets. Viewed in this light, her images offer a vivid basis for a sociological examination of our own species, addressing fundamental societal questions: What needs did we have and do we have? What did we need and do we need to live? How do we shape our surroundings? What role do images play?

Another significant series is dedicated to industrial gates, photographed between 1977 and 1985. The simple black-and-white images of these gates, with their grids and frameworks, offer glimpses into the interiors of industrial areas, their graphic structure appearing almost abstract. In the photographs, the gates function as interfaces between private and public space, between interior and exterior, and between activity and calm. Their aesthetic, reminiscent of abstract artworks, imbues the everyday with a new significance.

A particularly impressive documentary series is the body of work on the Düsseldorf Rhine Harbor, which Ronkholz began in 1979 together with her then fellow student Thomas Struth. The project originated from the planned redevelopment of the historic harbor area – a site that, in its original form, was considered an industrial area of significant urban historical and architectural importance. Struth observed the initial changes from his studio and convinced Tata Ronkholz to join the project. Together, they set out to document the harbor in its entirety, capturing its historic buildings, technical installations, and operational structures. They recorded façades, interiors, silos, warehouses, crane structures, and harbor basins in carefully composed images, before these elements partially disappeared or were fundamentally altered during the restructuring. The photographs strikingly showcase the industrial architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries while simultaneously highlighting the transformation from a center of commerce and production to today’s media harbor. Overall, this critically composed documentation of the Düsseldorf Rhine Harbor stands as an exemplary case for the complex issues of urban redevelopment in other locations as well.

In addition, the exhibition presents works that highlight Ronkholz’s achievements as a product designer, including depictions of geometrically shaped furniture and lighting fixtures as well as designs for office and cafeteria furniture. Between 1961 and 1965, she studied at the Werkkunstschule Krefeld with a focus on furniture design and subsequently worked as a freelance designer until 1977. Her designs are characterised by clear forms and functional elegance, as exemplified by the “Spherical Light” developed in collaboration with Adolf Luther, featuring a convex glass element. Finally, the retrospective also presents early photographs of architectural forms created in 1975/76 in Italy and France. Even in these works, her strong affinity for the aspects of the designed world across various areas of life becomes apparent.

Accompanying the exhibition is the catalog Tata Ronkholz: Designed World. A Retrospective published by Schirmer / Mosel Verlag, featuring texts by renowned authors (ger/en). The exhibition is supported by the City of Düsseldorf and VAN HAM Cologne.

Press release from Die Photographische Sammlung/ SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Rheinhafen Düsseldorf, Technik und Kräne (Rhine port Düsseldorf, technology and cranes)
Undated
From the series Rheinhafen Düsseldorf 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Im Düsseldorfer Hafen (In Düsseldorf harbour)
Around 1980
From the series Rheinhafen Düsseldorf 1979-1981
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Friseur, Köln-Ehrenfeld, Philippstraße 30 (Barber, Köln-Ehrenfeld, Philippstraße 30)
1980
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Boutique, Köln-Mülheim, Berliner Straße 120
1980
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Trinkhalle, Köln-Nippes, Merheimer Straße 294
1983
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Firma Tromm, Tor Gleisanschluss, Köln-Niehl (Tromm Company, Gate Rail Connection, Cologne-Niehl)
1983
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Firma ROW, Hafen, Tor Nr. 0930, Wesseling-Godorf
1984
© VAN HAM Art Estate: Tata Ronkholz, 2025

Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur
Im Mediapark 7, 50670 Köln
Phone: +49 221/888 95

Opening hours:
The ongoing exhibitions are open daily from 2pm to 7pm. With the exception of being closed on Wednesdays.

Die Photographische Sammlung website

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Exhibition: ‘Barbara Klemm. Light and Dark. Photographs from Germany’ at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig from ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen

Exhibition dates: 30th November, 2024 – 23rd March, 2025

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939) 'Offenbach' 1968 from the exhibition 'Barbara Klemm. Light and Dark. Photographs from Germany' at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig from ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, November 2024 - March 2025

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Offenbach
1968
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Apparently, “the exhibition presents photography by one of Germany’s most important artists.”

Until recently I had never heard of this artist and I have been studying photography for over 35 years.

Allegedly, “many of Klemm’s photographs have become “icons of contemporary history” and have shaped the cultural memory of several generations.”

What does that even mean – “icons of contemporary history” – it’s just art speak that means absolutely nothing!

If we actually look at the work there are some really strong photographs here that form a cohesive body of work which interrogates the reality of a country that was divided for decades, which examine the postwar formation of German culture and identity.

“[The exhibition] includes pictures from every sphere of society: from politics, culture and the economy, photos that capture unique and often tense moments as well as plain everyday life, photos of demonstrations, protests, and of immigrants, of cultural events, mass gatherings, and urban spaces.” (Text from ifa website)

While Klemm’s photographs combine the documentary and the artistic in German press photography, her artistic voice is not a lone voice in the wilderness documenting Germany before and after reunification. Variously (but not exclusively) we have from the 1930s onwards and reaching its social reality apotheosis in the 1970s-1980s artists such as Friedrich Seidenstücker, Benjamin Katz, Chargesheimer, Michael Schmidt, Helga Paris, Günter Zint, Wendelin Bottländer, Andreas Horlitz, Christa Mayer, Sibylle Bergemann, Tata Ronkholz, Thomas Struth, Wilhelm Schürmann, Volker Döhne, Elfriede Mejchar, Hildegard Heise, and Timm Rautert.

At their best Klemm’s photographs are essential – (in the sense ‘in the highest degree’: from late Latin essentialis, from Latin essentia (see essence)) – which is, the intrinsic nature or indispensable quality of something … which determines its character. That is what Klemm so vibrantly and insightfully captures, the true essence of an event which is then marked down in history. “Her sure sense of the true essence of an event allows her to capture moments that tell stories far beyond what the pictures seem to show at first glance.”

In the highest degree, Klemm’s photographs “offer an insight into the most significant aspects of social life in both the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR”

But she is not alone in this endeavour and to argue that her photographs are “icons of history” and that she is one of Germany’s most important artists is pure hokum. Why curators and/or media people continue to write this stuff is beyond me…

Just let the artist tell her stories and the photographs will speak for themselves.

Strength, insight, essence.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

Many thankx to the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939) 'Friedrichstrasse, East Berlin' 1970 from the exhibition 'Barbara Klemm. Light and Dark. Photographs from Germany' at the Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Leipzig from ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen, November 2024 - March 2025

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Friedrichstrasse, East Berlin
1970
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

The exhibition presents photography by one of Germany’s most important artists. Barbara Klemm’s work, spanning forty years, bears witness to the historical development and present-day reality of a country that was divided for decades. Many of her pictures have become icons of contemporary history, shaping the cultural memory of several generations.

An exhibition by ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V. ifa is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office, the state of Baden-Württemberg, and the city of Stuttgart.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Leipzig
1970
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Leonid Brezhnev, Willy Brandt, Bonn
1973
Gelatin Silver Print
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Psychiatric Clinic, Bethel
1973
Gelatin Silver Print
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Rostock
1974
Gelatin Silver Print
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Frankfurt am Main
1974
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Frauendemonstration gegen § 218 / Women Demonstration against Abortion Laws, Frankfurt am Main
1974
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
400 x 300 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm’s works bear witness to the historical development and present-day reality of a country that was divided for decades. Many of her pictures have become icons of contemporary history, shaping the cultural memory of several generations. It is a body of photographic work that blends documentation and artistic inspiration in a way that is rarely encountered in the German press.

With the exhibition Barbara Klemm: Light and Dark. Photographs from Germany, the ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen presents photographs by one of Germany’s leading photographers. At GfZK, they will be shown in Germany for the first time in 15 years

Most of the photographs shown in the exhibition were taken for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Starting in 1959, Barbara Klemm began her career at this newspaper working as a laboratory assistant and in plate production. From 1970, she became an editorial photographer focusing primarily on political and feature photography. However, her photographs are far more than coverage photos taken for the moment. They offer an insight into the most significant aspects of social life in both the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR. A central focus of the exhibition is on photographs taken in East and West Germany before and after reunification. These images portray diverse aspects of social life, including politics, culture, and business. They depict a wide range of social realities – precarious and everyday situations, demonstrations, protests, migrant life, as well as cultural events, mass gatherings and urban space.

With an unerring instinct for the essence of a situation, the photographer captures moments that reveal far more than what is portrayed on the surface. Her photographs, as Barbara Klemm herself describes, reveal the “distillation of an action” – and, in doing so, the distillation of history itself.

Text from the GfZK website

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Stift Ehreshoven, Loope
1977
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Bayreuth
1977
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Ronald Reagan Visits, West Berlin
1982
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Monument to Marx and Engels, East Berlin
1987
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
At the Reichstag, West Berlin
1987
Gelatin Silver Print
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Hawangen
1988
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
The Fall of the Wall, Berlin, 10 November 1989
1989
Gelatin Silver Print
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V

Photography as documentation and artistic inspiration

Many of Klemm’s photographs have become “icons of contemporary history” and have shaped the cultural memory of several generations. It is a photographic work that combines documentation and artistic inspiration in a way rarely found in the German press. Barbara Klemm adds her own perspective to the supposedly objective documentary and follows the design rules of art in her image compositions.

Although these photographs were mostly commissioned by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung – for which Barbara Klemm worked from 1959 as a laboratory assistant and in cliché production, and from 1970 as an editorial photographer specialising in politics and the arts section – they are far more than reportage images made for the day.

Social insights from East and West Germany before and after reunification

The images show the most important areas of social life in the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR. A clear focus of the exhibition is on photographs taken in East and West Germany before and after reunification. There are pictures from all areas of social life – from politics, culture and the economy – of precarious and everyday situations of social reality, of demonstrations, protests and the lives of immigrants as well as of cultural events, mass events and urban spaces.

About the exhibition

Many of her pictures have become “icons of contemporary history”, shaping the cultural memory of several generations. She has created a body of photographs which combine the documentary and the artistic in a manner seldom encountered in German press photography. She adds her own perspective to the documentary genre, following artistic principles of composition. Although the majority of these photos were commissioned for the daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung they represent far more than coverage of the day’s events. Barbara Klemm first joined the newspaper in 1959, working in the photo lab and producing photographic plates, before becoming a photographer on the editorial board for art, culture and politics in 1970. Her commissioned work for the newspaper took her to many of the most important events and places in the Federal Republic of Germany, the German Democratic Republic and in numerous other countries. Photos of East and West Germany before and after unification are clearly the focus of this exhibition. It includes pictures from every sphere of society: from politics, culture and the economy, photos that capture unique and often tense moments as well as plain everyday life, photos of demonstrations, protests, and of immigrants, of cultural events, mass gatherings, and urban spaces. And again and again, Barbara Klemm portrays people in those rare moments of being that make life so special.

Barbara Klemm’s photographs stand for concrete social reality. Her sure sense of the true essence of an event allows her to capture moments that tell stories far beyond what the pictures seem to show at first glance. These photos are “action in condensed form”, as Klemm puts it, and thus also a condensed image of history. Her photos of the fall of the Berlin Wall are a dramatic climax to her own narrative of history, and in retrospect, her earlier photos from both sides of the Wall seem to be tracing the two Germanies on their path towards reunification, while her later photos closely observe the consequences of the new order.

Text from ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen website

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Braunkohleabbau bei Leipzig / Lignite Mining near Leipzig
1990
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Oderberg, Oderbruch
1990
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Remnants of the Wall near Lübars, Berlin
1990
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Berlin-Marzahn
1991
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Frankfurt am Main
1993
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin
1994
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
Oranienburger Straße, Berlin
1994
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)
West Wall, near Aachen
1998
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939) 'Berlin' 1998

Barbara Klemm (German, b. 1939)939)
Berlin
1998
Black and white photograph on baryta paper
300 × 400 mm
© Barbara Klemm, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e. V.

GfZK-Villa
Karl-Tauchnitz-Str. 11
04107 Leipzig

Opening hours:
Tue - Fri: 2pm – 7pm
Sat - Sun: 12am – 6pm

GfZK-Villa website

Arc One Gallery website

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Exhibition: ‘Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art’ at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne

“Blossfeldt uses the logic of the plant and the logic of his mind to achieve his final vision. A/symmetry as art form.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 6th September, 2024 – 2nd February, 2025

Curator: Susanne Pfeffer

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932) 'Lichtnelke' Before 1932 from the exhibition 'Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art' at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, September 2024 - February 2025

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Lichtnelke
Before 1932
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Universität der Künste, Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln

Karl Blossfeldt’s photographs have been associated with Modernism, Surrealism and New Objectivity / New Vision.

“Hailed as a master for discovering a hitherto ‘unknown universe’ and for his exemplary technical feats as a photographer Blossfeldt’s work is, nevertheless, decidedly subjective as author Hanako Murata notes in her excellent essay on the artist Material Forms in Nature: The Photographs of Karl Blossfeldt (2014).

“Not only did he carefully select, arrange, and in some cases physically modify his specimens, but his meticulous attention to detail and image refinement continued throughout each step of production, beginning with his negatives.”1

Blossfeldt uses the logic of the plant and the logic of his mind to achieve his final vision. A/symmetry as art form.” (Dr Marcus Bunyan 2015)

Love them or hate them there are still few photographs like this in the history of photography. Magnificent photographs.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Hanako Murata. “Material Forms in Nature: The Photographs of Karl Blossfeldt,” in Mitra Abbaspour, Lee Ann Daffner, and Maria Morri Hambourg, eds. Object: Photo. Modern Photographs: The Thomas Walther Collection 1909-1949. An Online Project of The Museum of Modern Art. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2014.

Many thankx to the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“In contrast to sketched enlargements, which always contain a subjective element, these images present pure nature, so they are likely to provide inspiring material for students. In many cases, these photographs were made by enlarging small details that students could not easily make out in evening light. This considerably facilitates projects. I probably have more than a thousand of such photographs, from which, however, I can only slowly make prints.” ~ Karl Blossfeldt

This was written by Karl Blossfeldt in a letter dated April 11, 1906, to the administration of the educational institution of the art school where he taught from 1899 to 1930. The original letter is displayed in the current exhibition, along with other documents and publications, in a showcase. The quote provides insight into Blossfeldt’s pedagogical practice and highlights his appreciation for documentary photography and its potential for enlargement.

Press release from Die Photographische Sammlung

Installation view of the exhibition 'Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art' at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne

Installation views of the exhibition Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne

Installation views of the exhibition Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne showing in the bottom image, Farngewächse (Ferns)

With 271 original prints, the oeuvre of Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) is being presented in this scope for the first time in two decades. A consistent photographic oeuvre unfolds impressively, which emerged in the context of art education and was only discovered as an independent artistic approach a few years before Blossfeldt’s death. Today it ranks among the classics of photographic history and is mentioned in the same breath as August Sander and Albert Renger-Patzsch. In terms of reception, Blossfeldt’s photographs are regarded above all as prototypical of the artistic movements of New Objectivity and New Vision.

The exhibition is based on the holdings of the Berlin University of the Arts, the institution at whose predecessor school Blossfeldt himself trained as a sculptor and where he taught the subject of “modelling from living plants” for three decades from 1899. It was there that he created his plant photographs, which he used as illustrative models to teach his students about the variety of forms and details of the botanical world. The precise observation and artistic realisation of the vegetal forms were to serve as creative inspiration for designs in the field of applied art and architecture. In addition to photographs, Blossfeldt also made bronze casts of plant forms as teaching aids – albeit in much smaller numbers – and used them in class. Exemplary pieces are included in the presentation as well as handwritten letters, which provide insights into school procedures and contain statements on the relationship between natural and artistic forms.

Photography was an elementary means of expression for Karl Blossfeldt, which he used specifically for his own purposes. He photographed the heavily processed plant material in multiple enlargements and against a neutral background of light or dark tones. The photographs are of great formal power and concentration, which, beyond their function as teaching pieces, formulate a pictorial language that departs from the representational and leads to abstraction. In particular, Blossfeldt’s two publications “Urformen der Kunst” (1928) and “Wundergarten der Natur” (1932), which appeared during his lifetime, illustrate his own artistic interest in the photographic image. They impressively show how intensively he researched his subject area and how much he appreciated the aesthetic expressive possibilities of the plant as well as its mysteriously magical aura.

A comprehensive catalog presenting the Berlin Blossfeldt collection will be published by Schirmer / Mosel. The publication and exhibition are based on many years of cooperation with the Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur.

Text from the Die Photographische Sammlung website

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932) 'Osmundaceae - Königsfarngewächse' (Osmundaceae - Royal fern family) Nd from the exhibition 'Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art' at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, September 2024 - February 2025

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Osmundaceae – Königsfarngewächse (Osmundaceae – Royal fern family)
Nd
Gelatin silver print
20.0 x 28.4cm
Courtesy Universität der Künste, Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932) 'Adiantum pedatum' (Northern maidenhair fern – young rolled up fronds) Nd from the exhibition 'Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art' at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, September 2024 - February 2025

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Adiantum pedatum (Northern maidenhair fern – young rolled up fronds)
Nd
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Universität der Künste, Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Haarfarn (Adiantum pedatum), Junge gerollte Wedel, 20-fach (Hair fern (Adiantum pedatum), young rolled fronds, 20x)
Nd
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Universität der Künste, Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932) 'Akelei (Aquilegia chrysantha), Blüte' (Columbine (Aquilegia chrysantha), flower) Nd from the exhibition 'Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art' at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, September 2024 - February 2025

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Akelei (Aquilegia chrysantha), Blüte (Columbine (Aquilegia chrysantha), flower)
Nd
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Universität der Künste, Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Ziegelrote Brennwinde (Cajophora lateritia), Frucht, 10-fach (Brick-red morning glory (Cajophora lateritia), fruit, 10-fold)
Nd
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Universität der Künste, Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln

The exhibition features 271 original prints by Karl Blossfeldt and 13 corresponding bronzes, created in the context of his teaching at the educational institution of the Royal Museum of Applied Arts in Berlin. They come from a collection of over 600 original photographs from the archive of the Berlin University of the Arts, the predecessor of the named educational institution. Blossfeldt himself was trained as a sculptor there and later taught the subject “Modelling after Living Plants” at the same school. To familiarize his students with the diversity and details of the botanical world, he continuously developed new plant images. He chose his subjects based on his botanical and art historical knowledge, exploring the Berlin surroundings and the local botanical garden. The detailed observation of plant forms and their free artistic interpretation were intended to serve as inspiration for designs in applied arts and architecture.

Photography became an essential means of expression for Karl Blossfeldt, which he used with specifically crafted equipment for his purposes. He photographed the occasionally heavily modified plant material in multiple enlargements against a neutral light or dark background, producing images of great formal strength that vividly demonstrate the diversity of the plant world. Walter Benjamin’s insightful reaction to Blossfeldt’s photographs was correspondingly admiring: “The diversity of forms in nature is infinitely great. Of the approximately two billion people living on earth, there are no two who are completely alike. The same applies to the entire plant and animal world. Everywhere variations, everywhere mutations of a basic type.” (Walter Benjamin: “News from Flowers,” in: Die Literarische Welt, November 23, 1928)

Ultimately, Blossfeldt’s works have asserted themselves as independent artworks beyond their function as teaching aids. They start from the representational and lead to an abstract, typifying visual language that invites many associations. Particularly, the publications “Urformen der Kunst” (Art Forms in Nature), 1928, and “Wundergarten der Natur” (Wonders of Nature), 1932, which appeared during Blossfeldt’s lifetime, show how intensively he had explored his subject matter and how much he appreciated the aesthetic possibilities of plants and their mysteriously magical aura.

A comprehensive catalog presenting the Berlin Blossfeldt collection is published by Schirmer/Mosel Verlag (600 pages, 733 colour illustrations, €98, German/English, texts by Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Angela Lammert, Norbert Palz, Dietmar Schenk, Claudia Schubert). The publication and exhibition are based on the long-standing cooperation between the Universität der Künste, Berlin (Berlin University of the Arts) and the Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne.

Press release from Die Photographische Sammlung

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932) 'Schönmalve (Abutilon), Samenkapseln, 6-fach' (Abutilon, seed capsules, 6-fold) Nd from the exhibition 'Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art' at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, September 2024 - February 2025

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Schönmalve (Abutilon), Samenkapseln, 6-fach (Abutilon, seed capsules, 6-fold)
Nd
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Universität der Künste, Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932) 'Traubenholunder' (Elderberry) Nd from the exhibition 'Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art' at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, September 2024 - February 2025

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Traubenholunder (Elderberry)
Nd
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Universität der Künste, Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932) 'Osterluzei' (Easter Lily) Before 1928 from the exhibition 'Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art' at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, September 2024 - February 2025

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Osterluzei (Easter Lily)
Before 1928
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Universität der Künste, Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932) 'Bohne (Phaseolus), Keimling' (Bean (Phaseolus), seedling) Nd from the exhibition 'Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art' at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, September 2024 - February 2025

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Bohne (Phaseolus), Keimling (Bean (Phaseolus), seedling)
Nd
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Universität der Künste, Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Ackerschachtelhalm (Equisetum arvense), Sommertrieb (Field horsetail (Equisetum arvense), summer shoot)
Before 1926
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Universität der Künste, Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932) 'Winterschachtelhalm' (Winter Horsetail) Before 1927 from the exhibition 'Karl Blossfeldt – Photography in the Light of Art' at the Die Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne, September 2024 - February 2025

Karl Blossfeldt (German, 1865-1932)
Winterschachtelhalm (Winter Horsetail)
Before 1927
Gelatin silver print
Courtesy Universität der Künste, Berlin, Universitätsarchiv, in Zusammenarbeit mit der Photographischen Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Köln

Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur
Im Mediapark 7, 50670 Köln
Phone: +49 221/888 95

Opening hours:
The ongoing exhibitions are open daily from 2pm to 7pm. With the exception of being closed on Wednesdays.

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Exhibition: ‘Chargesheimer’ at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

“Chargesheimer’s images document the immediacy of this world of darkness and light in dystopian and utopian scenes… as though people are dreamt into strange, fractured cities.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 27th April – 10th November, 2024

Presentation in the Photography Room

Curator: Barbara Engelbach

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971) '77. Deutscher Katholikentag, Köln' (German Catholic Day) 1956 from the exhibition 'Chargesheimer' at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, April - November, 2024

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
77. Deutscher Katholikentag, Köln (German Catholic Day)
1956
Gelatin silver paper
29.6 x 39.6cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

A special event in Cologne was the 77th Catholic Day in 1956. It attracted over 800,000 people to the closing rally. Konrad Adenauer gave a speech at the time as Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany. Chargesheimer does not show the reason for the crowd, but the mass that forms an uncanny formation when it raises its right hand in greeting. In other photographs, the crowd appears to consist of individual people in random constellations.

I was born in 1958. Britain was still recovering from the privations of the Second World War with rationing not ending until mid-1954. Germany was a divided country, West and East, with communism an ever present threat across the border. The Iron Curtain.

Chargesheimer’s objective street photographs picture a Germany which remembers (is embedded in) the horrors of the past even as it strives to create a new future. His images document the immediacy of this world of darkness and light in dystopian and utopian scenes… as though people are dreamt into strange, fractured cities.

In dystopian photographs such as Hinterhof, Cologne (Around 1957, below) and Unter Krahnenbäumen, Cologne (Before 1958, below), Chargesheimer “captured the mountains of rubble in expressionistic images; the bombed-out ruins of houses radiate a gloomy blackness. Dark backgrounds and harsh contrasts can also be found in his portrait photos.” Illicit, fleeting intimacies and remembrances stain the photographs.

In seemingly mundane utopian photographs, Chargesheimer’s charged eye observes the conflation of the everyday and the absurd: the conformity of suit, tie, dress and handbag in Cologne (Around 1957, below) or the shredded paper being spread by the woman for the celebration of Corpus Christi in Ohne Titel (Konfetti streuendes Mädchen) (c. 1956-1957, below) in an almost empty street, the vanishing point leading off into an interminable, indeterminate distance.

“Chargesheimer takes an interest in people and their lives. This is reflected in the long series of images of individual people and their situations. He photographs a boisterous woman in a top hat in a bar, a couple with a dog in an inn, people decorating the street with flowers and shredded paper for Corpus Christi. Chargesheimer’s careful selection and editing bring the photographs to life. You can immerse yourself in them like in a neo-realist film from the 1950s.” (Text from Museum Ludwig)

Chargesheimer’s documentary visual style (his everyday language of light and life) has a hard cutting edge, sharpened by Germany’s political and social situation – that macrocosmos reduced and intensified in the microcosmic theatre of the street. His photographs alter both spatial and temporal perceptions through their “topographic immediacy… plung[ing] viewers into the nearly real-time plight of believable and flawed protagonists.”1

The drama of the streets. Dark and light. Such is life.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

1/ Ara H. Merjian, Rhiannon Noel Welch. “It’s a Neorealist World,” on the Art In America website September 22, 2020 [Online] Cited 01/11/2024

Many thankx to Museum Ludwig for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

“Durch Straßen wie diese führte mein Schulweg, sieben Jahre lang; viele tausend Male bin ich durch solche Straßen gegangen, aber nie in sie eingedrungen; erst viel später – in der Erinnerung begriff ich, was Straßen wie diese bedeuten, ich begriff es, wie man plötzlich Träume begreift, wenn ich in fremden Städten stundenlang durch Straßen ging und eine wie diese suchte, aber nicht fand.”

“My way to school led through streets like these for seven years; I walked through such streets many thousands of times, but never entered them; only much later – in memory – did I understand what streets like these meant, I understood it in the way one suddenly understands dreams when I walked for hours through streets in strange cities and looked for one like this but did not find it.”

Heinrich Böll Streets Like These (1958) from Unter Krahnenbäumen. Bilder aus einer Straße. Mit einem Text von Heinrich Böll (Unter Krahnenbäumen. Pictures from a street. With a text by Heinrich Böll) (Google Translate of the German)

Intimate moments and the rough Rhineland: under the pseudonym Chargesheimer, Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer became a photography legend in post-war Cologne. The Museum Ludwig celebrates the 100th birthday of the former citizen.

He captured the mountains of rubble in expressionistic images; the bombed-out ruins of houses radiate a gloomy blackness. Dark backgrounds and harsh contrasts can also be found in his portrait photos. For example, on the famous “Spiegel” cover photo from 1956 with a portrait of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer, which for some was all too diabolical and therefore damaging to the election campaign. Romy Schneider and Jean-Paul Belmondo were later better off.

His early death remains a mystery to this day. Chargesheimer died on New Year’s Eve 1971, probably taking his own life. He was only 47 years old.

Installation view of the exhibition 'Chargesheimer', Museum Ludwig, Köln 27. 4. - 10.11.2024

Installation view of the exhibition 'Chargesheimer', Museum Ludwig, Köln 27. 4. - 10.11.2024 showing Chargesheimer's 'Große Vitrine (Gebetsmühle)' (Large display case (prayer wheel)) Nd

Installation views of the exhibition Chargesheimer, Museum Ludwig, Köln 27. 4. – 10.11.2024 showing in the bottom image Chargesheimer’s Große Vitrine (Gebetsmühle) (Large display case (prayer wheel)) Nd
Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln/Marc Weber

On May 19, 2024, Cologne photographer Karl Heinz Hargesheimer, who was known as Chargesheimer (1924-1971), would have turned one hundred. To celebrate the centenary of his birth, Museum Ludwig will display a selection of around fifty of his works in the Photography Room. Chargesheimer rose to fame with his photo books Cologne intime and Unter Krahnenbäumen, both of which focus on everyday life in Cologne. The presentation includes forty-three pictures taken within the context of these two series. Two videos allow visitors to access the contents of the photo books. In addition, the presentation includes three of Chargesheimer’s lesser-known sculptures called Meditationsmühlen (Meditation Wheels) and six of his abstract photographic experiments.

In 1957 Chargesheimer’s photographs were published in Cologne intime, a photo book organised by Hans Schmitt-Rost, the then director of the Nachrichtenamt, or news agency, in Cologne. Chargesheimer was tasked with taking representative images of the reconstruction of the city, which had been reduced to ruins in the war, as well as depicting the “typical” residents of Cologne. The photographs contributed by Chargesheimer reflect his unusual, direct view of everyday life. In his 1958 book, Unter Krahnenbäumen, which he organised himself as an independent project, he juxtaposed similar photographs in starkly contrasting series of motifs. This documentation tells the unvarnished truth while affectionately exploring the street in Cologne whose name is featured in the book’s title. Chargesheimer shows life in the streets and in the bars of a lively Cologne neighbourhood that was still intact. German writer Heinrich Böll wrote in the foreword to this publication, “Streets like this one are perhaps the only places where people really live.”

Chargesheimer pursued many interests. Alongside his documentary studies, he investigated photography as an image-producing medium. In the late 1940s, he began experimenting with light graphics and photochemical processes and creating photographs without a camera. Chargesheimer described his experiments with photographic plates and negatives in a text accompanying his first exhibition in Milan in 1950: “Panning, wiping, scraping, cooling, burning – adding acids, bases, colours, and varnishes.” These experiments resulted in painterly works in the style of Art Informel that was prevalent at the time.

In 1967 Chargesheimer began creating kinetic works called Meditationsmühlen (Meditation Wheels) made of Plexiglas. Three of these works from the collection of the Museum Ludwig will be presented in the exhibition for the first time in thirty years. Consisting of multiple levels of crystalline elements made of Plexiglas, the dome-shaped constructions are put into motion through a complex system of gears. The bewildering variety of light reflexes from Plexiglas prisms creates an unusual contrast to the precise mechanics of the gears. Chaos and control seem to complement one another here.

Chargesheimer

On May 19, 2024, the Cologne photographer Chargesheimer (1924-1971), born Karl Heinz Hargesheimer, would have celebrated his hundredth birthday. To mark the occasion, the Museum Ludwig is showing a selection of around fifty of his works. Chargesheimer rose to fame with his photobooks Cologne intime and Unter Krahnenbäumen, which are dedicated to the city of Cologne. In them, he casts a singular and incisive gaze on everyday events. These images convey the artist’s attentive and empathetic approach to photographing the day-to-day lives of people in the various neighbourhoods he documented.

Chargesheimer explored photography’s diverse possibilities. In addition to his documentary work, he utilised photography’s potential as a pictorial medium. In the late 1940s, he began experimenting with light graphics and photochemical processes to produce cameraless photographs. The resulting images are painterly and abstract. From 1967, Chargesheimer also created kinetic sculptures made of Plexiglas, which he called Meditation Wheels.

Press release from Museum Ludwig

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971) 'Formlose Mitte' (Shapeless Center) 1949 from the exhibition 'Chargesheimer' at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany, April - November, 2024

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Formlose Mitte (Shapeless Center)
1949
Gelatin silver paper, light graphics
59.6 x 47.7cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Untitled
Around 1950
Gelatin silver paper, light graphics, mixed media
59.8 x 49.7cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Chargesheimer (Karl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971) 'Untitled (girl scattering confetti)' c. 1956-1957 'Chargesheimer' at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

Chargesheimer (Karl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Ohne Titel (Konfetti streuendes Mädchen)
Untitled (girl scattering confetti)
c. 1956-1957
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Chargesheimer (Karl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971) 'Fußballplatz' (Football field) 1957 'Chargesheimer' at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

Chargesheimer (Karl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Fußballplatz (Football field)
1957
From: Im Ruhrgebiet (In the Ruhr area)
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln

Cologne intime, 1957

In the mid-1950s, Chargesheimer photographed different views of Cologne for his photobook Cologne intime. Hans Schmitt-Rost, then head of the municipal news agency in Cologne, had commissioned him to document the successful reconstruction of the city. At the same time, he was to capture images of “typical” local residents. Chargesheimer photographed streets with empty properties cleared of rubble and the prominent new buildings in the city centre. His photographs show crowds of people on the main shopping streets, at the 77th Catholic Convention in Deutz in 1956, and at the Federal Garden Show in 1957. Chargesheimer enlarged details to show particular individuals going about their day. He focused on their distinctiveness, the quality that made them stand out in the crowd.

Hans Schmitt-Rost (1901-1978), who designed the book, uses his evaluative comments to dictate how the photographs should be read. He headed the Cologne City Intelligence Office from 1945 to 1966. In this role, he played a key role in shaping Cologne’s self-portrayal as a city removed from contemporary history, whose actual history is rooted in the Middle Ages. He excluded the Nazi era or relativized it as something foreign to the people of Cologne.

Text from Museum Ludwig

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971) 'Schildergasse, Cologne' Before 1957 'Chargesheimer' at Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Schildergasse, Cologne
Before 1957
Gelatin silver paper
29.8 x 39.7cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Cologne
Before 1957
Gelatin silver paper
29.9 x 39.7cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Hohe Straße, near Große Budengasse, Cologne
Before 1957
Gelatin silver paper
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Chargesheimer captured Hohe Straße from a distance. But he wasn’t concerned with the distance to the action, because he highlighted individual people. They stand out in the crowd because they make eye contact with him or speak to him.

The Hohe Straße in Cologne is an important motif for the publication. The filled shop windows and the streams of passers-by represent the economic boom after the currency reform in 1948… The Hohe Straße was already an important shopping street at the end of the 19th century. The Tietz department store, built in 1895, was also famous. Its owner, Alfred Leonhard Tietz, was forced during the Nazi era to sell the department store chain to Commerzbank, Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank for well below market value. He was robbed of his assets and had to flee. The department store was renamed Westdeutsche Kaufhof AG and continued to operate under this name after 1945.

Text from Museum Ludwig

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Kirmes Unter Krahnenbäumen
Before 1957
Gelatin silver paper
26.3 x 39.8 cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Kirmes Unter Krahnenbäumen
Around 1957
Gelatin silver paper
26.3 x 39.8cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv, Köln

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Autobahnzubringer im Rechtsrheinischen (Motorway feeder road on the right bank of the Rhine)
Around 1957
Gelatin silver paper
39.7 x 29.8cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Hinterhof, Cologne
Around 1957
Gelatin silver paper
24.7 x 19.6cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Away from the rebuilt city centre, Chargesheimer photographed intimate neighbourhoods for the photo book Cologne, which were characterised by old buildings, small shops and ruined properties. He also photographed Cologne’s nightlife in bars, workers’ pubs and restaurants with prostitutes without making any judgments.

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Cologne
Around 1957
Gelatin silver paper
30.4 x 23.3cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Cologne
1957
Gelatin silver paper
30.4 x 23.3cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Unter Krahnenbäumen, Cologne
Before 1958
Gelatin silver paper
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Unter Krahnenbäumen, 1958

A year after Cologne intime was published by Greven Verlag, they invited Chargesheimer to realise another photobook. This time, the selection and arrangement of the photographs were placed firmly in his hands. He dedicated the book to the small street of Unter Krahnenbäumen in Cologne. The opening pages present everyday life on the street, documenting people working or chatting with neighbours. These are followed by images of Carnival, which is celebrated on the street and in pubs until late into the night. Pages dedicated to children and the elderly mark a change in theme, while those devoted to the funfair or preparations for the Corpus Christi procession show a mix of generations. On the final pages, photographs of locals dancing and laughing on Unter Krahnenbäumen and inside its pubs reveal the year-round liveliness of the street.

Chargesheimer takes an interest in people and their lives. This is reflected in the long series of images of individual people and their situations. He photographs a boisterous woman in a top hat in a bar, a couple with a dog in an inn, people decorating the street with flowers and shredded paper for Corpus Christi. Chargesheimer’s careful selection and editing bring the photographs to life. You can immerse yourself in them like in a neo-realist film from the 1950s.

Text from Museum Ludwig

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Unter Krahnenbäumen, Cologne
Before 1958
Gelatin silver paper
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Unter Krahnenbäumen, Cologne
Around 1958
Gelatin silver paper
24.7 x 21.3cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

The Eigelsteinviertel was a lively and diverse neighbourhood in the 1920s. That changed under National Socialism, when the SA (Storm Division) and later the Gestapo (Secret State Police) persecuted communists. When the Nazis seized power, Jewish residents were expropriated, deported and murdered; Roma families living in Stavenhof, Unter Krahnenbäumen and on Gereonswall were deported to Auschwitz by the Cologne criminal police in the 1940s. After the war, the construction of the Nord-Süd-Fahrt marked a turning point in urban development. In 1957, the master plan for reconstruction came into force, which formed the basis of urban planning until the 1970s. He envisaged a 34-meter-wide lane for the north-south route across the district, which today also cuts through Unter Krahnenbäumen. The street had already been planned in this form during the National Socialist era. Even before the war began, the Nazi city administration had bought up land on both sides of the planned route.

Text from Museum Ludwig

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Unter Krahnenbäumen, Cologne
Around 1958
Gelatin silver paper
24.8 x 21.3cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Unter Krahnenbäumen, Cologne
Around 1958
Gelatin silver paper
24.9 x 21.3cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Unter Krahnenbäumen, Cologne
1958
Gelatin silver paper
17.9 x 29.8cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Chargesheimer’s work with the unwieldy large format camera Linhof Super Technika meant that he spent a while in each location. He became part of the situation because the residents turned to him and started talking to him. Many of the photos were taken on the Catholic holiday of Corpus Christi. The residents decorated the street with green leaves, house altars and shredded paper for the procession.

Chargesheimer (Carl-Heinz Hargesheimer, German 1924-1971)
Kleine runde Meditationsmühle (Small round meditation mill)
1968 /1969
Acrylic, metal, machine part
Diameter: 34cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
Photo: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Gerd Sander (German, b. 1940)
Portrait of Chargesheimer
1969
Gelatin silver paper
27 x 19cm
Museum Ludwig, Cologne
© Gerd Sander, courtesy of Galerie Julian Sander, Köln
Reproduction: Rheinisches Bildarchiv Köln

Museum Ludwig
Heinrich-Böll-Platz,
50667 Köln, Germany

Opening hours:
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Review: ‘Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst’ at the RMIT Gallery, Melbourne

“The photographs tell a powerful story of Germany before and after the fall of communism whilst instilling in the viewer a wondering, an accumulation and visual nourishment for the senses.” Dr Marcus Bunyan

Exhibition dates: 1st March – 20th April, 2024

Curator: Matthias Flügge

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Dodendorfer Straße' 1998 From the series 'Morgenstraße. Magdeburg 1998-2000' from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst' at the RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, March - April, 2024

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Dodendorfer Straße
1998
Aus der Serie: Morgenstraße. Magdeburg 1998-2000
From the series: Morgenstraße. Magdeburg 1998-2000
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

Wondering through history

Wonder noun. a feeling of amazement and admiration, caused by something beautiful, remarkable, or unfamiliar.

As enunciated by Jake Wilson in The Age newspaper in a review of the film La Chimera, “ultimately, the problem dramatised here is the same one faced by any modern artist: how do you retain a meaningful link to your predecessors while shaping something new?”1

Further, my mentor and friend Ian Lobb would often challenge me to define what I was adding to the artistic dialogue of photography instead of repeating the language of a previous era, and I would spar with him asking him was it really necessary to constantly reinvent the wheel, was it not enough to see and feel with clarity and humour those precious moments that surround us, and insightfully photograph them. These are the questions that enliven life: is it always necessary to shape something new, or is it enough to be attentive to the moment – of your mind, heart and vision – to create spellbinding photographs that carry your own interpretation of a certain reality.

Such is the case with the stimulating, two-room exhibition of the German photographer Ulrich Wüst at RMIT Gallery, Melbourne.

Wüst’s photography shows great affinity with the work of Bernd and Hiller Becher and the Becher and Dusseldorf Schools of photography which would have been known in East Germany by the time Wüst shot the 1980s series Stadtbilder. 1979-1985 (Cityscapes. 1979-1985) that first brought Wüst to international attention (the border was very permeable to artistic ideas from the West reaching East Germany).2 Indeed, most of Wüst’s oeuvre has direct links to the aesthetic of the Bechers (with their attention to detail and “devotion to the 1920s German tradition of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity”) and photographers such as Thomas Ruff (with their surreal enlargement of scale and “fundamentally sceptical attitude towards photography’s claim to truth and documentation”).

I believe that referencing and riffing off that aesthetic as Wüst does is no bad thing … for it forms the basis for the photographer’s further take on reality. But there are plenty of other forces at play in his photographs. I observe traces of August Sander, Berenice Abbott, Robert Frank, Michael Schmidt and Eugène Atget among others, especially with the latter in the positioning of Wüst’s camera.

As he observes, “When shooting I often find that if I move just fraction away from the more customary perspective a subtle heightening of tension with take place within the image. It’s no accident that I and my camera frequently get suspicious looks when the angle of the lens shifts away from the perspective found in souvenirs and postcards.” (Wall text from the exhibition)

And this is exactly what Atget did, he moved his camera from the “normal” point of view ever so slightly so that there immediately becomes this tension within the image plane coupled to the possibility of a magical revelation of space, an ironic comment on construction, or a grotesque play of opposites. As Wüst says, his vision, his observation, contains “plenty that is comic, grotesque, ironic” which many people do not see.

If we think about the supposedly objective work of the Bechers, which they insisted was all about documenting the object and not about any type of emotion, we fail to consider, as Julia Curl opines, “that this “objectivity” is only surface-level – that the work is deeply personal, even if its apparent uniformity claims otherwise.”3 Personally, I have never bought into the cool objectification of the Becher’s work for the photographers made defined choices as to how they depicted their constructed realities, each iteration of a water tower, gravel plant or cooling tower different from the other (fragments of a whole). This was deeply personal vision of how the world is perceived.

The same can be said of the photographs of Ulrich Wüst. His photographs are entirely personal, fragmentary excavations of history. In Wüst’s works by series, his photographs – surreal, sculptural scenes absent of people, full of elemental beauty – are not just the flawed humanity of our creation / the creation of our flawed humanity … but the creation and imagination of the human mind captured by the eye of the camera. Wüst’s photographs challenge us to look closer at the reality around us not accepting the status quo, the postcard view, not walking the city as if unaware of the vistas around us, feeling the “traces, injuries, missing and empty spaces in the image, so that things begin to speak of themselves…”4

As the art historian Matthias Flügge states, Wüst’s photographs are “images of intellectual-spatial situations,” wholly a creation, an accretion, on existing forms of photography. Not something new, which is ultimately unnecessary, but a growth in “wondering” – not wandering – achieved through the gradual accumulation of additional layers of beauty, feeling, knowledge so that we are informed and fully aware of our (un)familiar surroundings.

The photographs tell a powerful story of Germany before and after the fall of communism whilst instilling in the viewer a wondering, an accumulation and visual nourishment for the senses.

Such is the photography of Ulrich Wüst.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

PS. The only down side to this exhibition is that all the black and white photographs are modern archival ink jet prints. Call me old fashioned but these pigment prints have no real “presence”. It’s like the difference between an LP and a CD, or a movie in Technicolor or 5K. One has “atmosphere”, one has mood and aura and the other just sits there in all its perfection like a dog with a bone waiting for you to go “oooh, ahhh”. There are people that say you can’t tell the difference between the two. Rubbish. Give me gelatin silver prints any day of the week.

1/ Jake Wilson. “Lost and Found while digging up the cinematic past,” in The Age newspaper, 11 April 2024, p. 24.

2/”Huyssen reveals the complexity of artistic development on both sides of the Wall and notes that “the borders between East and West became porous during the 1970s as a result of treaties between the GDR and the FRG.” His focus in this regard, however, is on those artists who left the East for the West and made an impact there, such as Georg Baselitz and Gerhard Richter; he does not acknowledge the extent to which ideas and influences went in both directions. … While it is true that West German artists showed little interest in exhibiting in the East or in the art that was created there, East German artists tended to be well informed about Western artistic developments…” p. 598

April A. Eisman. “East German Art and the Permeability of the Berlin Wall,” in German Studies Review, Vol. 38, No. 3 (October 2015), pp. 597-616. Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of the German Studies Association

3/ Julia Curl. “Bernd and Hilla Becher’s Misunderstood Oeuvre,” on the Hyperallergic website November 2, 2022 [Online] Cited 11/04/2024

4/ Jacek Slaski. “Ulrich Wüst – Stadtbilder 1979–1985: Zwischen Kunst und Dokumentation,” on the tipBerlin website 03/02/2022 [Online] Cited 08/04/2024. Translated from the German by Google Translate

Many thankx to the RMIT Gallery and the ifa for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

An exhibition by ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V., Stuttgart – in partnership with the Goethe-Institut. This project is an official exhibition of PHOTO 2024 International Festival of Photography.

“Most viewers, unfortunately, are so dreadfully serious when they look at the pictures. I have to “hammer it home” incredibly hard before anyone will allow themselves to laugh. In my works there is simply – perhaps a bit hidden – plenty that is comic, grotesque, ironic.”

Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

“I’m sure I do give those power symbols the aesthetic treatment, otherwise it’s unlikely that I would have any desire or energy to photograph them. But it would also be unfair to say that these objects do not hold their own innate aesthetic fascination. All I can do is try to describe how I am torn between spontaneous fascination and rational rejection, aiming to convey that experience and make it understandable. When shooting I often find that if I move just fraction away from the more customary perspective a subtle heightening of tension with take place within the image. It’s no accident that I and my camera frequently get suspicious looks when the angle of the lens shifts away from the perspective found in souvenirs and postcards. People are very attuned to that sort of shift.”

Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Flatland. Schönhof, 2013 (centre), The Pomp of Power, 1983-1990 (left) and Red October, 2018 (right) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst’s photographic work captures his wanderings through German history, portraying the social and urban transformations from the GDR and its disintegration, through the German reunification to the present day. Wüst revives the German history in a new static way, where the past and present clash in a dynamic and ever-changing environment.

Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst shows a selection of nine suites taken between 1978 and 2019. Ulrich Wüst’s photographic work can be contemplated from different perspectives. While the observations captured here are rooted in Germany’s division and its mending, at the same time they always relate to universal phenomena of social change and its material manifestations. The seemingly terse images, extremely precise in their composition, are the fruits of lengthy visual wanderings through present sites of recent history.

Ulrich Wüst’s photographic œuvre, which explores Eastern Germany in the broader sense, is not confined to the sunken GDR. It might be described as a pictorial archaeology of our present day. These pictures reveal the finds from his “excavations” and are at the same time tools of their conservation. Wüst has an infallible feel for the graphic quality of everyday situations, objects and materials, but also for the deeper layers of significance associated with found images. Examples are the enlarged details from East German press products that demonstrate a manipulative use of photography.

Ulrich Wüst’s photographic work can be contemplated from different perspectives. While the observations captured here are essentially rooted in Germany’s division and its mending, at the same time they always relate to universal phenomena of social change and its material manifestations. The seemingly terse images, extremely precise in their composition, are the fruits of lengthy visual wanderings through present sites of recent history.

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Flatland. Schönhof, 2013, from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Flatland. Schönhof' 2013 from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst' at the RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, March - April, 2024

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Flatland. Schönhof
From the series: Flatland. Schönhof
2013
Colour photograph, archival pigment print
57 x 38cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Flatland. Schönhof' 2013 (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Flatland. Schönhof
From the series: Flatland. Schönhof (installation views)
2013
Colour photograph, archival pigment print
57 x 38cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

“These photographs of newspapers and magazines were taken in the countryside, things that I found within a very small radius. Previously I had always done that urban stuff but then I would go looking for contrasts, because after a while your eye becomes tired.”

Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Cityscapes 1979-1985 (left) and Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege 1991-1992 (right) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst’s photos are “images of mental-spatial situations”

In every city there are places that have been photographed thousands of times. From tourists, amateurs and professionals. Always captured on paper or the digital matrix. Big Ben, Eiffel Tower, Alexanderplatz in the heart of Berlin. Thousands, even millions of looks at the striking symbols of a metropolis that want to capture the essence of the city. Ulrich Wüst was far away from such direct concepts. His view of Alexanderplatz is almost shy, more of a cautious approach, and yet he gets a grip on the place. But it’s not primarily about Berlin. Wüst’s city images are less studies of specific cities than “images of intellectual-spatial situations,” as the art historian and rector of the Dresden University of Fine Arts Matthias Flügge states in his insightful text for the photo book Ulrich Wüst – Stadtbilder 1979-1985 (Ulrich Wüst – City Images 1979-1985).

If you read Flügge’s text, it becomes clear once again that a picture is not just a picture and that it requires more than a fleeting observation, especially with a subject like the cityscape. Because you could easily come to the conclusion that you immediately understand the motif at hand, after all, you yourself are a city dweller and are aware of your habitat. But a photograph is also a starting point for deeper reflections. Wüst’s photographs of prefabricated buildings in East Berlin, vacancies in Magdeburg, and the central square in Karl-Marx-Stadt are not unseen motifs. Rather, they are all too well known. Such urban constellations should not be foreign to anyone who lived in the GDR in the 1970s and 1980s, or even those born later or socialised in the West. …

“Determining the status quo of the constructed, shaped, printed or otherwise produced objective world with all its traces, injuries, missing and empty spaces in the image, so that things begin to speak of themselves,” is what Wüst does, writes Flügge.

Jacek Slaski. “Ulrich Wüst – Stadtbilder 1979–1985: Zwischen Kunst und Dokumentation,” on the tipBerlin website 03/02/2022 [Online] Cited 08/04/2024. Translated from the German by Google Translate. Used under fair use conditions for the purposes of education and research

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Berlin' 1982 From the series 'Cityscapes. 1979-1985'

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Berlin
1982
Aus der Serie: Stadtbilder. 1979-1985
From the series: Cityscapes. 1979-1985
B/w archival pigment print
16 x 24cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

“For me it had always been about the built environment. […] And then I started on those rather dry Cityscapes, which always seems so objective, even though they never were and never tried to be. I wanted to take a concentrated, analytical look at the city. Back then I had a strong sense of mission; I really did want to achieve something. And the things I wanted to say about the city as space I also wanted to tell people who weren’t at all interested in photography or urban space. In some respects it was definitely intended to enlighten. Ultimately I wanted to provoke a debate about what we imagine a “city” to be and what this environment does to us.”

Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

Axel Hütte (b. 1951) 'James Hammett House' 1982-1984

Axel Hütte (German, b. 1951)
James Hammett House
1982-1984
Silver gelatin print on baryte paper
66 x 80cm
Loan of the artist

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Cityscapes. 1979-1985' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Stadtbilder. 1979-1985
From the series: Cityscapes. 1979-1985 (installation views)
B/w archival pigment print
16 x 24cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

The work of Ulrich Wüst might best be described as a pictorial archaeology of recent German history. With an unsentimental precision these photographic ‘excavations’ pivot around moments of social change; those points in history when the old and the new collide, when the seemingly endless cycle of destruction and construction can so easily relegate the present to the oblivion of the past.

Initially photographing life in the former East Germany, Wüst’s oeuvre grew to include the documentation of everyday situations, objects and materials; expanding further with the addition of found images, cropped and rephotographed by Wüst to reveal alternative readings.

In his sparse black and white Cityscapes, the 1980s series that first brought Wust to international attention, we find images of East German cities and towns still carrying scars from the Second World War – an environment formed through the combination of unchecked decay and Soviet-era reconstruction. With an interest in the absurd – those visual anomalies that arrive through accident or misguided intent – Wüst has forged a unique, non-ideological representation of that time. In a similar manner but on a different scale, Wüst’s Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege (1991-1992) – a photo inventory of objects left behind by the former owner of his house – engages us with the incidental nature of history. Intimate and fragile, these ordinary objects are made monumental through Wüst’s lens, yet these discarded possessions have the same precariousness as the hastily built architecture of cities in perpetual change.

Ulrich Wüst’s photographic work exists as a registry of everyday images. It could be considered akin to the personal archive of a once divided country mending itself, wandering through time, settling upon moments and fragments that also speak to the wider, universal phenomena of social change and its material manifestations.

Wall text from the exhibition

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Cityscapes, 1979-1985 (right), Morgenstraße. Magdeburg, 1998-2000 (second right), Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 (third right) and Red October, 2018 (left) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Morgenstraße. Magdeburg, 1998-2000 (right), Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 (centre left) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Morgenstraße. Magdeburg' 1998-2000 (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Morgenstraße. Magdeburg 1998-2000
From the series: Morgenstraße. Magdeburg 1998-2000 (installation views)
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

“As soon as we see people in pictures, we focus on those people. We seem to be fixated on that somehow and we stare at the figures depicted, however small they may be. But as I wanted to steer attention to the built environment, to what we have built for ourselves, I quite simply decided to leave the people out. If there a no people in sight in the pictures, then for one thing nobody can look at them and for another the effect is disconcerting. Disconcertion is a good opening gambit.”

Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

Berenice Abbott (American, 1898-1991)
Fifth Avenue, Nos. 4, 6, 8, Manhattan
March 20, 1936
Gelatin silver print

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Kaffemühle' (Coffee grinder) From the series 'Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege 1991-1992'

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Kaffemühle (Coffee grinder)
Aus der Serie: Nachlass Wiegmann. Bülowssiege 1991-1992
From the series: Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege 1991-1992
Colour photograph, archival pigment print
105 cm x 70cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

“I make a point of calling myself a photographer, because then the art question usually no longer arises. But if others still want to see me as an artist, I can (happily) live with that. Personally I don’t want to think about that question. The only thing I do want to stress is that my work is not documentary. I use documentary technique as a form, as a means, and in certain works I am also looking for documentary precision.”

Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege 1991-1992' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Nachlass Wiegmann. Bülowssiege 1991-1992
From the series: Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege 1991-1992 (installation view)
Colour photograph, archival pigment print
105 cm x 70cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Cityscapes, 1979-1985 (left) and Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 (right) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 (left) and Notations 1984-1986 (right) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Berlin, Pappelallee' September 1984 From the series 'Notations. 1984-1986'

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Berlin, Pappelallee
September 1984
Aus der Serie: Notizen. 1984-1986
From the series: Notations. 1984-1986
B/w archival pigment print
14 x 21cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Notations. 1984-1986' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Notizen. 1984-1986
From the series: Notations. 1984-1986 (installation views)
B/w archival pigment print
14 x 21cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

“While I was still busy fine-tuning my technical skills for Cityscapes, over in West Germany very small automatic rangefinders were coming onto the market. That was in the early 1980s. […] I got hold of one of those and suddenly I could carry a camera with me all the time, take it anywhere, and I started using it like an “extended eye”. The little camera allowed me to take more intimate, more “personal” works. For me that meant talking about my own life. That was the beginning of the series Notations, as I later called it. I focused on my circle of friends and my immediate environment. And so the Notations came about and that was what I wanted to achieve, as a conscious antithesis to other series like the Cityscapes.”

Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Red October 2018, from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Roter Oktober (Red October)
2018
Leporello with 45 b/w and colour photographs mounted on cardboard
14.8 x 21.0 x 2.0cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

Michael Schmidt (German, 1945-2014)
Müller-Ecke Seestrasse, Berlin-Wedding (Berlin-Wedding)
1976-1978
© Michael Schmidt, Foundation for Photography and Media Art with the Michael Schmidt Archive

Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) 'Dusseldorf, Sankt-Franziskusstraße 107' 1977

Tata Ronkholz (German, 1940-1997)
Dusseldorf, Sankt-Franziskusstraße 107
1977
Silver gelatin print on baryta paper
41.2 x 51.2cm
Courtesy The Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne / Permanent Loan of the Sparkasse KölnBonn

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Roter Oktober' (Red October) 2018 (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Roter Oktober (Red October) (installation views)
2018
Leporello with 45 b/w and colour photographs mounted on cardboard
14.8 × 21.0 × 2.0cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

“Photographers love to complain about the chaos they work in and how that prevents them from keeping tabs on what they do. At some point I realised that the concertinas were a fantastic tool for tracing and recoding the progress of my work. Above all, they enabled me to locate my negatives, because I used very simple but precise captions with the place and date of the picture. I always liked the versatility of the concertina. Now, whenever I need to find a negative, I take one of these booklets of the shelf and look for the photograph. They have become a means to communicate with myself about my work and I miss them when they are being exhibition and I haven’t got them at home.”

Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, The Pomp of Power. 1983-1990, from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'The Pomp of Power. 1983-1990'

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Die Pracht der Macht. 1983-1990
The Pomp of Power. 1983-1990
Leporello with 30 b/w photographs mounted on cardboard
14.8 x 21.0 x 1.5cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'The Pomp of Power. 1983-1990' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Die Pracht der Macht. 1983-1990
The Pomp of Power. 1983-1990 (installation views)
Concertina booklet with 30 b/w photographs mounted on cardboard
14.8 x 21.0 x 1.5cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Clarity and compositional elegance

It may also have been his professional disposition that led him to pay particular attention to the GDR city. After all, he was an expert. Wüst was an expert in the field of urban development; he knew exactly what he was photographing. In the midst of the “leaden times” of the GDR, an era shortly before the collapse in which hardly anything seemed to be moving. Mid-1970s to mid-1980s. Urban and housing construction has long since said goodbye to the promising ideals of a better, because socialist, promise. The reality was pragmatic and merciless. Dilapidated old building and decaying substance on one side and serial prefabricated building on the other.

Wüst’s pictures, which sometimes develop a peculiar irony in their clarity and compositional elegance, can also be understood as political statements. “They searched for clues in a way that was unusual in the GDR as a way of ascertaining the real perceived state of the present,” writes Flügge about the photographer, who knew exactly what he wanted to find and capture. Even the depiction of reality could be considered subversive in the workers’ and farmers’ state. It wasn’t appropriate to show things as they were. Rather, you should show things as they should be. …

By “limiting the image section, he forces reality to formulate its own,” summarizes Flügge.

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark, 2014-2019 from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Book of the Years. 1978-2008 (right) and Mitte. Berlin, 1994-1997 (left) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Schützenstraße / Jerusalemer Straße' 1996 From the series: 'Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997'

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Schützenstraße / Jerusalemer Straße
1996
Aus der Serie: Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997
From the series: Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

The different historical eras come together in his pictures. Relics from the pre-war period, often ruins, alongside the proud examples of Eastern Modernism from the post-war period, and finally the cheap and quickly built architecture of the present day. These photos are still important today, and not just for architectural historians and photography connoisseurs. Wüst’s pictures of the GDR city are visual findings about the condition of its residents, even if the people in them are absent. In his text, Flügge quotes from Alexander Mitscherlich’s book Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte. Anstiftung zum Unfrieden (The inhospitability of our cities. Incitement to Discord), in which the doctor, psychoanalyst and writer examined the West German city as early as 1965: “This city shape is regressively shaping the character of its residents.” In his book, Mitscherlich hoped that the city would one day become a “biotope for free people”. It didn’t quite turn out that way, but in a certain sense Mitscherlich wasn’t entirely wrong either. The GDR would soon disappear and with it the GDR city.

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997
From the series: Mitte. Berlin 1995-1997 (installation views)
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

I am well aware of how ambivalent photography is. And just because photographs have a documentary air about them, I find it to some extent dubious to slap a documentary label on them. If, ten centimetres from the edge of my picture, the whole content is counteracted by something completely different, then I can no longer claim to be doing serious documentary work. Documentation as a form, in my view, is just a way to explore a theme – a means. I only want to photograph and not distort things. It’s true that there is a documentary background, but what I do with it is always something of my own and totally subjective.

Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, 'Mitte. Berlin 1994-1997' (right) and 'Prentzlow. Prenzlau', 2018 (left) from the exhibition 'Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst', RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Mitte. Berlin 1994-1997 (right) and Prenzlau, 2018 (left) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Prenzlau, 2018, from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series ‘Prenzlau’ 2018

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Prenzlau
From the series: Prenzlau
2018
Colour photograph, archival pigment print
45 x 30cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Prenzlau' 2018 (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Prenzlau
From the series: Prenzlau (installation views)
2018
Colour photograph, archival pigment print
45 x 30cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 (right) and Book of the Years. 1978-2008 (left), from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Kreta' (Crete) 1997 From the series 'Book of the Years. 1978-2008'

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Kreta (Crete)
1997
Aus der Serie: Jahrebuch. 1978-2008
From the series: Book of the Years. 1978-2008
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Book of the Years. 1978-2008' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Jahrebuch. 1978-2008
From the series: Book of the Years. 1978-2008 (installation views)
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

Robert Frank (Swiss-American, 1924-2019)
London
1951
Gelatin silver print

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Jahrebuch. 1978-2008
From the series: Book of the Years. 1978-2008 (installation view)
B/w archival pigment print
18 x 27cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

August Sander (German, 1876-1964) 'Das Siebengebirge von der unteren Terrasse hin zur Löwenburg' 1922

August Sander (German, 1876-1964)
Das Siebengebirge von der unteren Terrasse hin zur Löwenburg
The Siebengebirge from the lower terrace towards the Löwenburg castle
1922
Gelatin silver print
© Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Sitftung Kultur – August Sander Archiv, Köln; VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2022

A collection/compilation. A great deal of chance and responding to mood. The urban excursions, by contrast, followed a strict pattern. There it was about the grey cityscapes, grey “Mitte” and grey “Morgenstraße”. And yet all of them were taken in bright sunlight! Without the weather forecast promising a safe sunny day, I would probably never have been brave enough to set out on wanderings that did not augur much solace.

Most of the pictures in the book of the Years, on the other hand, really were taken in grey weather. They were done over a period of thirty years, mostly without any particular intention, straight from the experience. Later I gathered them into a kind of melancholy section through times and places. The pictures say: I was here. And I was in this or that mood. They are mood! And sometimes they flirt with the mood as well. That can happen.

~ Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Mitte. Berlin 1994-1997 (right), Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark, 2014-2019 (left) and Prentzlow. Prenzlau, 2018 (centre) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst’s photographic work captures his wanderings through German history, portraying the social and urban transformations from the GDR and its disintegration, through the German reunification to the present day. Wüst revives the German history in a new static way, where the past and present clash in a dynamic and ever-changing environment.

Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst shows a selection of nine suites taken between 1978 and 2019. Ulrich Wüst’s photographic work can be contemplated from different perspectives. While the observations captured here are rooted in Germany’s division and its mending, at the same time they always relate to universal phenomena of social change and its material manifestations. The seemingly terse images, extremely precise in their composition, are the fruits of lengthy visual wanderings through present sites of recent history.

Text from the RMIT Gallery website

Installation view, Ulrich Wüst, Wiegmann Legacy. Bülowssiege, 1991-1992 (left) and Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark, 2014-2019 (right) from the exhibition Wanderings About History. The Photography of Ulrich Wüst, RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, 2024
Photo: Christian Capurro

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) From the series 'Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019' (installation view)

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Randlage. Die Gemeinde Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019
From the series: Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019 (installation view)
B/w archival pigment print
26 x 39cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photo: Marcus Bunyan

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949) 'Parmen' 2016 From the series 'Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019'

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Parmen
2016
Aus der Serie: Randlage. Die Gemeinde Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019
From the series: Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019
B/w archival pigment print
26 x 39cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa

“In the last few years I started taking pictures in the countryside again. The idea was to have photographs of villages and landscapes that were just as “dry” as my cityscape series, like Berlin, or Magdeburg. The resulting work is far removed from any sort of rural idyll, but equally as far removed from the affection I have from these landscapes. I chose not to give too much away.”

Ulrich Wüst, wall text from the exhibition

Ulrich Wüst (German, b. 1949)
Aus der Serie: Randlage. Die Gemeinde Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019
From the series: Village Edge. The Municipality of Nordwestuckermark 2014-2019 (installation views)
B/w archival pigment print
26 x 39cm
© Ulrich Wüst; ifa
Photos: Marcus Bunyan

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