1974… 40 Years. 40 Photographs

For 40 years the activities of Galerie Kicken Berlin have focused on spectacular and subtly compelling photographs from all epochs of photography. Conceived as both a vision for the future and retrospective, the exhibition 1974… 40 YEARS. 40 PHOTOGRAPHS is representative of the medium’s success story and the contribution that the gallery has made to firmly establishing photography in the international art trade. Including works from Pictorialism, the Bauhaus, New Objectivity, and New Vision, as well as their Central European variants represented by the Czech avant-garde, and featuring approaches ranging from fotoform to documentary styles, photo journalism, and candid photography, the works in the exhibition engage in a dialogue spanning multiple eras and styles.
Contributions by Heinrich Kühn and Rudolf Koppitz respectively mark the beginning and the end of Pictorialism. August Sander, Albert Renger-Patzsch, and Werner Mantz’s photographs represent the typologically precise, objective, and pared-down view of objects and buildings. Shown together with works from the 19th century, such as Leopold Ahrendts’ architectural vedute, these images demonstrate an inherently modern idiom. This is also true of the chronophotography of Ottomar Anschütz, in which a striking visual aesthetic precedes technical innovation.
Frantisek Drtikol is known for his unparalleled compositions with female nudes, Josef Sudek for his images of the objects that surrounded him, which he distilled from and elevated above the ordinary. Man Ray, László Moholy-Nagy, and Umbo pushed the boundaries of the photographic perspective, and their works inspired Otto Steinert and the fotoform group to revive the practise photography as an artistic means of expression extending beyond the portrayal of reality.
The works of Bernd and Hilla Becher as well as Heinrich Riebesehl portray industrial and agricultural sites as contemporary man-made landscapes. Despite the many differences in their personal imagery, the contemporary artists of the gallery—Joachim Brohm, Götz Diergarten, Charles Fréger, Jitka Hanzlová, Péter Nádas, Hans-Christian Schink and Alfred Seiland—share a conceptual approach in their perspectives on people and the environment.
Understanding photography as art and, above all, as an adventure of seeing—communicating this to a wider public was the goal of Rudolf Kicken’s 40 years of gallery work, which Annette Kicken and her team are continuing with this selection of 40 seminal photographs.