In April, the largest presentation of The Walther Collection’s holdings to date will take place at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, K21 in Düsseldorf, Germany. Shifting Dialogues: Photography from The Walther Collection traces the development of photography as a history of transnational parallels and contradictions: showcasing the beginnings of ethnographic images during the colonial era, self-determined studio photography—and politics of self-fashioning—from the 1940s onwards, and the potent visual activism practiced by a constituency of contemporary artists in the present.
In May, our Museum Campus in Neu-Ulm will reopen with Samuel Fosso: The Retrospective, the first major retrospective devoted to the French-Cameroonian photographer Samuel Fosso, one of the most renowned African contemporary artists. The exhibition brings together Fosso’s work from The Walther Collection with other emblematic series and unpublished photographs from his youth and will be touring from the Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris, to The Walther Collection, Neu-Ulm, and then to Huis Marseille, Amsterdam. Following an English version in November 2021, the French edition of Autoportrait was published by Steidl and The Walther Collection.
Additionally, we have some updates to our growing publication program. A new book series entitled “The Walther Collection Books” is currently being established that will bring together essays by renowned curators and scholars to highlight the diversity of the Collection’s holdings while making important exhibition topics more accessible to the broader public.
The first book in the series will be Events of the Social: Portraiture and Collective Agency — African Photography from The Walther Collection, an exhibition of the same title, curated Elvira Dyangani Ose, and presented in Madrid as part of PhotoEspaña 2021. This publication charts the changing features of African societies in their transition from colonization to the present and focuses on three generations of African artists from the 1940s to now.
In 2020, a total of four books were published in collaboration with Steidl Verlag: two monographs dedicated to the work of Samuel Fosso, SIXSIXSIX and Autoportrait; our latest catalogue Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography; and Photographs 1980s – now, the first major publication to present a comprehensive selection of the work of South African photographer Jo Ractliffe.
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We truly want to hear from you.
We are looking forward to welcoming you at the reopening of our Museum Campus in Neu-Ulm, in May 2022!
Artur Walther
Sophie-Charlotte Opitz
Iheanyichukwu Onwuegbucha
Clara Stratmann
Troy Wong