Exciting encounter between contemporary and historical photography
Works by Simone Nieweg, August Kotzsch and Sora Park in the Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur
September 8, 2023 – January 21, 2024:
Simone Nieweg – Plants, Sheds, Arable Land: Working in Nature
in collaboration with the artist
August Kotzsch – Nature, Landscape, Genre
September 8 – November 5, 2023:
Sora Park – With me, with you. Portraits and Still Lifes
Three parallel exhibitions can be seen at Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur. The photographs of Simone Nieweg and August Kotzsch show discoveries made in the landscape of intriguing objects both natural and human-made. Their juxtaposition makes for an exciting encounter between contemporary and historical photography. Also on view will be recent portraits and still lifes by Sora Park, 2022 August Sander Award winner.
For the master student Simone Nieweg (b. 1962) in Bernd Becher’s class at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, the view of nature and the arable land created by human hand formed important starting points for her artistic work back in the 1980s. Even then, she was already preoccupied by urgent questions about how we treat our natural resources. Her color photographs, which Nieweg shoots in the Rhineland and other regions of Germany as well as in France using a large-format camera, draw our attention to the often overlooked outskirts of towns and industrial areas. They highlight the aesthetic qualities that unfold when these still un-zoned areas are cultivated in a limited fashion, usually upon individual initiative, for gardening or agriculture. Elements that give the land structure and continuity are captured here: alternative allotment gardens, future building land, patches of meadow, fields going to seed with wild vegetation, vegetable beds, plowed fields in winter, or blossoming fruit trees as harbingers of spring. Structures built by simple means, whether sheds or compost racks, reveal themselves to be typical components of their particular landscapes.
The exhibition will be accompanied by an eponymous catalogue, published by Schirmer/Mosel Verlag.
August Kotzsch (1836–1910), one of the early masters of German photography, offers a historical counterpart to Simone Nieweg. He takes us with him on his rambles through nature in his home region of Loschwitz near Dresden. Landscape scenes, garden corners, still lifes, and the fruits of his own harvest, but also houses and farms, were his preferred motifs. Depicting in loving detail, these cherished views paint an at once realistic and romantic picture of his surroundings. A self-taught photographer and son of a winemaker, Kotzsch used a complex process to produce his photographs. He made his negatives using the wet collodion process, and his prints on albumen paper. Thanks to this method, his images shimmer in iridescent sepia tones.
The works on loan come from the estate of August Kotzsch in cooperation with KICKEN BERLIN. They are complemented by exhibits from the in-house collection.
Sora Park (b. 1991 in Gimpo, South Korea) received the August Sander Award in 2022 for her project “With me, with you.” In addition to a representative selection from the award-winning series, the show also features photographic still lifes in which the artist transforms everyday found items and materials into imaginative objects.
“With me, with you” shows young women and men from Sora Park’s inner circle as well as fellow students at Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen. The photographs are for the most part individual portraits taken either in the photographer’s own home or in those of the sitters. With her analogue large-format camera, Park always takes only one exposure, which lends added intensity to her well-balanced compositions. In the series, the artist introduces us to a young generation working in the artistic-creative milieu as a crucial life phase along the way toward finding their identity.
Die Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Im Mediapark 7, 50670 Köln, phone: +49 221/888 95 300, email: photographie( at )sk-kultur.de, www.photographie-sk-kultur.de
Admission: 6,50 € (reduced 4 €), first Monday of the month free admission!
Opening hours: daily except Wednesdays from 2 to 7 pm.
On the first Thursday of the month open until 9 p.m., free entry from 5 p.m.: There are special program items.
Closed December 24, 25, 26, 31, 2023 and January 1, 2024,
Open December 28, 29 and 30, 2023 and from January 2, 2024.
Public tours are held weekly on Sundays at 3 p.m. each week. Thematic focus on the first Sunday of each month (The tours are held in German, English on request).