The ways in which humans and nature are compelled to adjust in order to meet the ends of capitalist value creation are explored by Luise Marchand in her artistic work. By examining the economies of desire, she avails herself of the aesthetics and the visual vocabulary of the advertising industry, with the aim of subverting this imagery at the very same time through a precise selection of pictorial subjects and installation forms.

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Using traditional documentary means, he was unable to find a visual equivalent for the sheer vehemence of the wars that have been rocking the country for decades and have torn society apart. Instead of recording as many events as accurately as possible, Raisan Hameed now searches within the photographic material for images and omissions to testify to the effects of flight and migration.

With their work Asphalt, Steine, Scherben, Sophia Kesting and Dana Lorenz dedicated themselves for around twelve years to the conditions and layers of time in Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz. In the cracks in the asphalt, the remnants of the architecture and the gatherings of people, they search for the specific features that characterise this place, its history, and also its potential.

In her artistic work, Huda Takriti occupies herself with the charged political relationships in the “Middle East,” which have also shaped her family. She shifts the perspective from current events to the effects of migration on collective and individual visual memory and seeks out alternative forms of archives that take a stand against power relations shaped by history.

Talisa Lallai subtly calibrates the use of color in her work. She takes pictures on color negative film and makes movies on Super 8 film, which she then scans and prints, projects, or displays on monitors.

To read Irmel Kamp’s photographs as classical architectural photography would fall short in purely formal terms. With the compositional inclusion of perspective, light, and shadow, she distills the special aspects of the building and examines the mutual influences between the buildings and their surroundings.

Sophie Thun has photographed windows for her work again and again. These images unfurl a particular effect in exhibitions, for in this space the artist stages life-sized renderings of the windows, or of the photographic material, in a compelling way.

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For its third film, Komik – komisch (Comic – comical), the Künstlerinnengruppe Erfurt set itself the task of countering the image of women in socialism and the “straightforward, upright political gait” that was propagated with non-conformist movements, with their own personal movement patterns. By using the vehicle of the comic, they were also able to visualize serious and tragic topics from their own life reality in the film.

For the subculture scene of the 1980s, working with a Super 8 camera offered a largely free field of experimentation. While the film productions of DEFA, the state-owned film studio in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), were monitored by the government and modern video technology was not available to private individuals for economic and political reasons, the official art and culture policy did not consider Super 8 to be an artistic medium.

In addition to the understanding of authorship, Sophia Kesting's project raises the question of the public visibility of archive material that does not fit into the category of artwork.

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In her choice of motifs Christine Erhard concentrates on the interrelationship between image and space and its visual communication. One work group shows details of interior spaces, the corners containing windows or doors to give an impression of depth, which are based upon found images of interiors. Erhard overlays these interiors with lines and planes that structure the image.

It is precisely this greater differentiation between analog and digital working methods that provides an opportunity to develop new types of images instead of nostalgically mourning the disappearance of certain photographic traditions. The answers to the questions of what makes a picture a picture and what the relationship between photography and the world is are thus far more complex than ever before.

Hachmeister takes a close look at what is merely hinted at with the prepositions von and zu in the title: instances of transformation. In doing so he engages in an exploration of the bodies of people and animals, of the transformability of your own body and he offers us a peek at fitness studios, nature and building sites.

In order to speculate on possible future scenarios, Onorato & Krebs collide fragments from this pool of images in FUTURE MEMORIES. Using a digitally programmed laser, they cut up their analog negatives or highlight the idiosyncrasies of what they have photographed. The laser’s intense beam leaves a mark on the negatives, rendering their materiality visible as it burns into the emulsion layer.

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Instead of highlighting a specific female gaze or deconstructing existing reference works, the editors view their book as a necessary addition. It shows how women have contributed to the development of photography as a medium since it was invented in the mid-nineteenth century—on all five continents—through both their work and their dedicated activity as lecturers, collectors, curators, theorists, and publishers.

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In Adrian Sauer’s series Modell, the relationship to reality is enigmatic, although the materials are identifiable and the pictures have a recognizable composition.

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For Taiyo Onorato and Nico Krebs all photographs are constructs. For them the choice of detail, the framing, and the intention of the author already cause images to lose their neutrality.

As regards the material, your work is characterized by an experimental and reflective engagement with the medium. How do the method of working and the subject influence each other?

The titles of your groups of works and publications such as Leaving White Spaces, Never Really There, Leaving Again, or a way point to a vanishing from the image. What do you aim to achieve with this abandonment of the image space?

Jens Klein views archives as flexible constellations, rather than as static entities. For his works, he meanders through the visual worlds of the past. The codifications and epistemological nexuses of archives serve as both starting point and goal of his artistic activity.

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In the pictures, the words lose their strength. The text literally becomes a typeface that is unstable and ambiguous but not vague.

The chemical-analogue or digital basis of the medium enables a range of output formats. Prints can now be made on virtually any material; and when projected, photographs are incorporeal. This flexibility of media makes photographs open to other forms of visual expression and new spatial systems.

It reveals a great deal about us, perhaps even more than about the person portrayed: when the image of this person triggers empathy, indifference, or rejection, portraits become “mirror images or counter-images of ourselves”.

Your installation will be activated and reactivated during the exhibition. What will happen and how will the perception of your work change?

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“the illiterate of the future will not be those who cannot read and write but those who are ignorant of the camera” – László Moholy Nagy’s much-quoted plea of 1928, calling on us to learn to read and to use photographs just as we do letters, words, and sentences, seems to have acted as an unspoken leitmotif for Schäfer.

What is the difference between making photos with a computer and taking them on location?

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Johanna Diehl makes use of signifying codes such as these in contrasting historical and contemporary finds. Through details and conscious omissions, she generates a vacuum that draws the viewer into her photographs.

However, to describe photography as merely a visual research aid does not do justice to the medium. Photography’s role in science is as multifaceted as science’s influence on photography.

Sci-Fi or science? Markus Krottendorfer’s slideshows with infrared film make it difficult to distinguish between the two.

He washes out the silver in the analogue prints using the latest techniques of chemical processing and replaces it, in the case of his desert pictures, with color particles from grains of sand he has brought with him.

Looking at these photographs, we can almost hear the quiet rattle of the pellets or the whine of the missiles.

It is exciting when a jellyfish floats across the screen or a fox pads into view – otherwise there is not much happening unless you’re in the know.

Once the images are fixed, they continue to oxidize slowly – at a speed that depends entirely on the ambient light – and so they address another one of the fundamental aspects of photography: light itself.

His works bring these calibrations to the forefront – a digitially rendered optical wedge pays homage to the tint-dyed gelatine photometers of the 19th century.

Sauer deconstructs the perfection of digital photography with posters bearing black and white squares measuring 1.5 x1.5 mm.

The lyricism she conjures is the result of a precisely calculated experiment: a white haze of photographed smoke powder wafts through her images.

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To exaggerate a bit, one could view such a measurement of rooms as meticulous documentation. How much subjective perception is involved in the installations?