Modern in black and white | Rhine-Main

The exhibitions

Peter Lindbergh in the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt at Friedensplatz: The exhibition, which the photographer himself conceived shortly before his death, is finished and is already hanging. “Untold Stories” can be seen as soon as the museums are allowed to reopen, probably until April 18th. Museum director Martin Faass talked to the stylist Julia von Boehm about Lindbergh’s pictures and the people behind them; the conversation can be found online at www.hlmd.de.

Torben Eskerod , one of the most famous contemporary Danish photographers, is introducing the Fotografie-Forum Frankfurt, Braubachstrasse 30–32. The “Findings” exhibition is also hanging and should open as soon as possible. It can be seen until May 9th.

Seeing in a new way is the name of an exhibition at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, Schaumainkai 63, which provides an overview of the sensational photography of the 1920s and 1930s, mainly from its own photo collection, which includes around 5000 works. The exhibition is planned for the period from June 30th to October 24th.

Nini und Carry Hess, Two outstanding women photographers from the Weimar Republic are rediscovering the Giersch Museum on Frankfurt’s Museumsufer, Schaumainkai 83, with a comprehensive research project. This is to become an exhibition that will be devoted to the work of the sisters for the first time from August 22 to December 5. Most of her work was destroyed by the National Socialists, and Nini was murdered.

Lee Miller , the legendary US photographer, and her war photos show the Opel villas in Rüsselsheim, Ludwig-Dörfler-Allee 9. This exhibition is also hanging and could open immediately. It should be on view until July 25th.

The international triennial Finally, from June 3rd to September 12th, RAY-Fotografieprojekte between Darmstadt and Eschborn will present an overview of contemporary photography. aph

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Lindbergh himself had chosen the pictures for his exhibition from thousands of photos. And he would probably have traveled to Darmstadt for the opening, even without a biographical reference to the city. But a few days before a first visit to the exhibition rooms in the State Museum at the beginning of September 2019, the photographer died unexpectedly at the age of 74. “But he was able to complete the selection shortly before his death,” says Faas. “He was the curator himself, we see the exhibition with his own eyes.” Lindbergh also determined the hanging, emphasizes curator Haas. “This results in a dialogue between the images that impresses me very much.”

Torben Eskerod’s pictures in the Photography Forum Frankfurt

2021 will be a year of photography in the Rhine-Main area. That may be a coincidence, but it may also show the growing appreciation for the medium. The Frankfurt Photography Forum is very similar to the Hessisches Landesmuseum: The comprehensive exhibition “Findings” about the Danish photographer Torben Eskerod, born in 1960, who photographed Queen Margarethe II for a stamp, as well as landscapes, death masks or intoxicatingly beautiful still lifes , was specially curated for Frankfurt and gives an overview of almost 30 years of his work. But so far nobody has seen them either. “As soon as the doors can be opened again in culture, we are ready to go,” says Sabine Königs from the Photography Forum.

Lee Miller show in the Opel villas in Rüsselsheim

The Opel villas in Rüsselsheim will present another big name in spring / summer: They show the work of the photographer and artist Lee Miller, who accompanied the US armed forces to take iconic war photographs, for example of herself in Hitler’s bathtub, shortly after a visit to the recently liberated Sachsenhausen concentration camp. “Hautnah” is the appropriate title of the exhibition, which is to open as soon as possible.

The Lee Miller retrospective is part of the international RAY triennial, for which eleven museums and exhibition halls in the Rhine-Main area are working together from June 3 to September 12, including the Deutsche Börse photo collection, the DZ-Bank collection, the Photography Forum, the Museum of Applied Art and the MMK. The common theme is “ideologies”.

The Frankfurt Museum Giersch has also been included in the program of the Triennale, where Susanne Wartenberg and the photography expert Eckhardt Köhn have been researching the life and work of the two Frankfurt photographers Nini and Carry Hess for years. The Jewish sisters, almost forgotten today, were the portraitists of stars and starlets in the 1920s, just as famous as Thomas Mann or Max Beckmann, who modeled them. The image of the “Roaring Twenties” that we have today is also largely shaped by its glamorous photos, which were published in numerous magazines of the era.

Photo art from the time of Nini and Carry Hess in Frankfurt

The fact that the Hess sisters are still almost unknown today is hardly understandable, but is due to the terrible circumstances of the time. Nini, actually Stefanie, born in 1884, and her mother were murdered in a Nazi extermination camp, Cornelia, born in 1889, who was always called Carry, managed to escape to France in 1933, but only barely survived the German occupation. The Nazis had already destroyed her studio and the photo archive during the pogrom night of 1938.

The Städel in Frankfurt, right next to Haus Giersch, gives photo enthusiasts the opportunity to compare. In 1845 it was the first art museum in the world to exhibit photographs. The new technology had only been invented six years earlier.

The house has a large, high-quality photo collection and from June 30th to October 24th is showing a selection of photographs from the 1920s and 1930s, supplemented by important loans. You can see works by contemporaries: the Hess sisters, including Lotte Jacobi, Albert Renger-Patzsch and Umbo, whose work continues to shape international aesthetics to this day.