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2023 DFA Conference | Hamburg
Hamburg
We cordially invite you to the Winter Conference in Mannheim! On the first weekend in December, DFA members and invited guests will present their photographic work for discussion. Selected lectures will be streamed LIVE on Facebook.
Deichtorhallen, Halle für aktuelle Kunst, Deichtorstr. 1–2, 20095 Hamburg
"A central aspect of Ute Lindner's artistic work is the theme of reflection: the phenomenon of the mirror image, the reflection of spaces and figures, the space in-between image and reflection. Ute Lindner does not see photography as an instrument for reproducing reality, but rather as a material for shaping and changing it. The artist assembles a multitude of photographic images to create an autonomous reality that dissolves the extra-pictorial references of space and time and achieves a dissolution of boundaries through their entanglement. Inner and outer perceptions merge into a continuum in which habitual notions of perspective and spatial order are suspended. The viewer's gaze, released from a fixed frame of reference, thus also becomes the object of the image." (Excerpt from: Christoph Kivelitz, "Through the Looking Glass").
Ute Lindner is a photographic artist from Berlin. Her works have been shown nationally and internationally, most recently at Galeria Nowa Scena/Poznan, EMOP Berlin, Torrance Art Museum/LA and are represented in renowned public collections such as the National Museum of Art/Osaka, Norton Museum of Art/Palm Beach, Jeane v. Oppenheim Collection, the Collection of the Federal Republic of Germany, Kunsthalle Bremen, Berlinische Galerie, Neues Museum Kassel, etc. Member of the International Artists' Committee (IKG).
"Hermine Oberrück's photographic gaze is directed at the relationship between cause and effect, at the depiction of suffering, fear, dependency, resistance, political discontent, life with impairments and marginalised existences on the one hand and the individual, social and political framework conditions of human life situations on the other... In her work, she combines the scientist's technical-analytical approach to social problems with the photographer's emphatic view of the individual. She accompanies fates photographically and makes their conditionality transparent. At the same time, as a journalist, she maintains the necessary distance. There is no need for comparisons with other photographers to classify Hermine Oberück. She is a solitaire in the German photo scene, like a free-standing tree in nature, free-standing and yet deeply rooted in life and togetherness." (Christoph Linzbach in brennpunkt 1/2023)
Born in 1951, lives and works in Bielefeld. Since 1988 freelance photographer, e.g. for SPIEGEL, ZEIT and EPD, including social photography reportages from the health sector, on working and living conditions (e.g. of people with handicaps and dementia) and documentation of forms of political resistance, e.g. against nuclear energy and right-wing radicalism. Long-term studies, exhibitions and publications on topics such as "Living with breast cancer", "Migration" and "Life after Chernobyl".
Short biography of the couple Ingrid and Dr. Michael Schupmann
Bärbel Möllmann
From image to word and back - this is how one could describe Marina D'Oro's career. Initially only flirting with the image, coveting it, not (too) daring - photography had long since been invented, but was not considered art, and was not in her mind - she studied German and political science and earned her living by writing. Along the way, she created word pictures, called poems. But the image was never only in the word. Over the years, it gained the upper hand and finally displaced the word, almost completely. Since the 2000s, the self-taught photographer has been working with pictures.
On 3 December she presents:
Marina D'Oro lives in Frankfurt am Main, experiments with words and photos.
kunstfabrik-darmstadt.de/marina-doro
"The pronounced officialisation and schooling of the cultural sector as well as the fixation on zeitgeist narratives make it difficult for many to say what they really think and only do what they think is appropriate, regardless of prevailing sensitivities and their own careers. Autonomous, free art is currently experiencing a crisis. Just like the individual in times of current identity politics, which necessarily function via group affiliation. Artistic activity today is associated with so many requirements, there are so many "must have's" and "no go's" to consider, meaningful references to collect and at the same time marketing oneself, that it is very difficult to find oneself in a sustainable way. But only then can you find art in a way that makes you independent of economic success, the opinions of others and the fear of failure."
From: As a business, art was almost always feudal. Interview with Stefan Gmünder, full text, 11.01.2023
Peter Truschner is a writer and photographer. His second novel "Die Träumer" is nominated for the German Book Prize. His photo book "Bangkok Struggle" was published in 2016. Since 2018, he has made the "Fotolot" of "Perlentaucher" the most widely read online column on photography in the German-speaking world. In 2021, Klostermann published "Die Maske abgenommen", a treatise on the historical relationship between artist and model.
Since 2023 he has been a member of the DGPh and a jury member of the German Photo Book Prize.
In his report, Jürgen Scriba provides a detailed insight into the current discussions surrounding artificial intelligence and the generation of images, as they have taken place at the Deutsches Fotorat. Scriba is head of the "Technological Progress" working group, which has been working on the influence of AI on the future of photography since the beginning of 2023. In May, the Deutscher Fotorat published a jointly developed position paper on generated images.
https://dfa.photography/mitglied/jurgen-scriba
Short text about the book:
In Tiefenenttrümmerung. Der Traum vom Reich, Arwed Messmer deals with his own photographic archive. Previously, he had worked in his projects with collections from the history of the police, military and urban development in order to approach the depths of German history. Now he himself looks at the profound upheavals in East Germany and Berlin following the unification of the two German states in 1990. In addition to photographs of Berlin's urban redevelopment, which primarily document the demolition of GDR post-war modernist buildings, Messmer shows strangely monotonous landscapes in transition shortly before their often disruptive transformation. To this end, he uses previously unpublished photographs, re-edits existing groups of works and places the series in relation to one another. The problematic aspects of dealing with German history, which confronts us today with the return of national thinking, emerge clearly in the overall view of the pictures.
Short biography:
Since the early 1990s, Arwed Messmer (*1964) has dedicated himself to documenting the changes in Berlin and East Germany as a photographer. Since 2007, he has also been working with image collections in archives that have lost their original function. This has resulted in extensive exhibitions and publications on East Berlin in the 1950s, the Berlin Wall, the State Security archives and West German left-wing terrorism.
In addition to his photographic work, Peter Bialobrzeski has conceived and curated two travelling exhibitions between 2020 and 2022, which are or were shown regionally (Experiment Heimat in Westfalen) and internationally (40 years of laif). In an illustrated lecture, Peter Bialobrzeski will explain which considerations and networks led to the respective results and why different media and carrier materials were used and what role the respective budgets and employees played.
Peter Bialobrzeski studied politics and sociology before working as a local reporter in his home town of Wolfsburg. After studying photography in Essen (Folkwangschule) and London (LCP), he initially worked for international magazines before beginning to publish his projects in book form at the end of the 1990s. In 2002, Bialobrzeski was appointed Professor of Photography at the University of the Arts Bremen. His photographs have been shown in exhibitions worldwide and can be found in numerous private and public collections. He lives in Hamburg and has worked as a freelance artist, photographer, curator and teaches at the Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie since retiring from active university service.
Hans-Christian Schink
Born in Erfurt in 1961, lives in Lindetal, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. 1986-1991 studied photography and graduated as a master student at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig in 1993.
"Look over there, what's going on?"
For his long-term study "War without War", Meinrad Schade first travelled to countries in the former Soviet Union (2003 - 2012). He then focussed on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (2013 - 2017). He has now opened a new chapter with the working title "War in Film". In it, he examines how real conflicts are reflected in fictional film-making. He spent the whole of August on a film set in Armenia and photographed the "making of" a feature film about the Armenian struggle for Nagorno-Karabakh. The film is set in Nagorno-Karabakh and should actually have been shot there, but this was not possible due to the current situation on the ground. Meinrad Schade presents the result of this photographic journey, which represents an intermediate stage of the chapter, as a total of five different war films are to be accompanied.
Short biography
Meinrad Schade (1968) grew up in Kreuzlingen (CH) and has lived in Zurich since 1988. After studying biology, he dedicated himself to photography. He has been a freelance photographer since 2001, realising long-term projects alongside his commercial work, which have been published in books and shown in exhibitions. He has been working on his long-term project "War without war" since 2003. In contrast to classic war photography, he is interested in locations that are at different spatial and temporal distances from the actual wars.
Patrik Budenz studied business informatics in Bamberg and photography at the Neue Schule für Fotografie Berlin. He has been working as a freelance photographer since graduating in 2009. His series POST MORTEM won the New York Photo Award and he was a finalist in the competitions of the Kassel Photo Book Festival 2009 and the Stuttgart Photo Summer 2010.
Birte Zellentin graduated from the Neue Schule für Fotografie Berlin in 2012. She has been working as a freelance photographer in the field of documentation and public relations since 2009, focussing mainly on political and social actors. In addition to her commissioned work, she explores the aesthetic scope of digital photography and image processing in her freelance work, with colour and structure appearing as recurring themes.
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