Collection Area #1: Photographs

The Collection’s photographic images area includes almost a million photographs that chart the medium’s development around the world. Our holdings range from individual photos to collections containing several thousands of images. It features images by local photographers such as Adolphe Braun and Alois Löcherer who had gained a reputation outside our region, and showcases key German photographers such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Monika Boch, Joachim Brohm, members of fotoform, Heinrich Hoffmann, Thomas Hoepker, Lotte Jacobi, Barbara Klemm, Germaine Krull, August Sander, Hilmar Pabel, Timm Rautert, Timm Ullrichs, Jürgen Teller, and Willy Zielke. Numerous international photographers are also represented, e.g. Berenice Abbott, Ansel Adams, Roger Ballen, Samuel Bourne, Felice Beáto, Félix Bonfils, Robert Capa, Claude Cahun, Julia Margaret Cameron, T. Enami, Frank Eugene (Smith), Francis Frith, Seiichi Furuya, André Kertesz, Studio Kimbei, Georgio Sommer, Will McBride, and Yva. We have views into the Global South from travel photographs from countries in Africa, Southeast Asia, South America, and India, most of which were created during colonial rule.

This collection area also charts the wide-ranging history of photographic technology. It includes daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, ferrotypes, pannotypes, cartes de visite, postcards, stereographs, autochromes, slides and much more besides. In addition to individual photos, it features albums, portfolios, and leporellos, as well as three-dimensional art and photo sculptures. Their different materialities bear witness to the numerous changes that have affected historical ways of collecting photography. In addition to our many vintage prints, we have prints taken from an original negative on a later occasion, and authorized reproductions.