Journals of the FOUNDATION PHOTOGRAPHY black and white

The STIFTUNG PHOTOGRAPHIE schwarzweiß is committed to the preservation, development and dissemination of analogue black-and-white photography.

Photography as an image medium is undergoing progressive change. Photography as the basis of modern communication, as a documentation medium, as an art medium is becoming increasingly important in our visually influenced society.

The danger of losing important evidence of the more than 150-year history of analog photography in the transition from analog to digital photography is the impetus for the foundation to explore and preserve legacies and archives.

Furthermore, knowledge about the processing, presentation and archiving of analogue black and white materials is imparted.

In memory of the "Edition Photothek", the PHOTOGRAPHIE black and white Journal series is published in booklet format, with exclusively analogue black and white photographs. Each journal shows a theme or presents the work of a photographer. Great importance is attached to the design, the material used and the printing (duplex tone). This keeps analogue photography in the present.

Journal No1

Christian Klant – Wet Plate Portraits

Pause – in two ways, that is what Christian Klant from Berlin's portraits, produced using the wet plate process (analog photo process), are like. Firstly, the production process requires concentration and keeping still from the people portrayed and the photographer (the process requires long exposure times). Secondly, the viewer of the photos can pause and go on a personal journey of discovery.

Journal No2

Pictures of an institution/Ueckermünde

On October 1, 1875, the Ueckermünde Provincial Mental Hospital was opened. The history of the institution is shown using historical photographs (1890s-80s). The change during this time in the attitude of doctors, nurses and nurses in front of the camera and also of the photographer is clear in the photographs.

 

Journal No3

Angela Fensch – Portraits

Journal N°3 shows classic portraits of young people in 2016 and doctors in 1992. "Their models not only present themselves in front of the lens in their familiar living environment or a place of their own choosing, they also decide on the way in which they want to be portrayed."

Journal No4

Martin Weinhold – In Canadian Workspaces

Journal No5

Jana Dillo – Rob R. de Jong

Journal No6

Hans-Joachim Schubert – collages

On October 1, 1875, the Ueckermünde Provincial Mental Hospital was opened. The history of the institution is shown using historical photographs (1890s-80s). The change during this time in the attitude of doctors, nurses and nurses in front of the camera and also of the photographer is clear in the photographs.

 

Journal No7

Roland Köhler – Uckermark

For city dwellers who are willing to emigrate, the Uckermark is a kind of place of longing for originality, a projection surface with a pinch of promise of freedom and self-determination. Many succumb to the magic of this mixture.

Roland Köhler too. In 1998, he moved from Berlin to a village that would soon consist only of (former) Berliners, as if by chance. After turmoil, a period of upheaval and life in a society undergoing extreme change, the photographer's gaze also calmed down in the solitude and vastness of the Uckermark.

His pictures melt this mythical, ice-age-shaped ground and terminal moraine landscape into graphic surfaces and contrasting perspectives. Into archaic compositions of a borderland since time immemorial. We see quiet, sublime places. Picture diagonals that explore the horizon like home.

 

Journal No8

Barbara Wolff – Amazonia

Belém, the city in the south of the Amazon Delta, is not a paradise. Located below the equator, it receives twice as much rain as the banks of the Spree. Whether it is January or July, the thermometer climbs above 30 degrees almost every day and even the nights bring little cooling. All around is a perpetually green world in which the most bizarre animals wind around the most bizarre plants. This is the setting in which the photographer Barbara Wolff found her impressive subjects. People who do not resist this melancholic aura, but are part of it. Barbara Wolff's pictures suggest that the warm, humid and historical genius loci has taught Belém's inhabitants for generations that any attempt to separate one from the other is doomed to failure. A touch of apathy hovers over the black and white scenes, but it could just as well be described as enviable equanimity.

 

Journal No9

Jaroslav Šklíba – On the move

The photographs by Jaroslav Šklíba (1905-1994) are disturbing. We see liberated Czech prisoners from the Sachsenhausen and Ravensbrück concentration camps moving through Mecklenburg in the spring of 1945. Men and women roam in small groups through the forests and villages of defeated Germany. The mood seems relaxed. They camp out in the open, take a dip in the lake, requisition a cow here, a team of horses there, and make sure they can take the next stage with a full stomach. A sewn-on prisoner number, a triangle, or fragments of the prisoners' clothing remind us of the hell that this colorful bunch escaped a few days earlier.