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4/3/2009

Lothar Wolleh

Goethe-Institut, Paris

We are happy to announce the first exhibition in France of one of the most genial and extraordinary 1960's German photographers specialising in portraiture:
Lothar Wolleh (born 1930, died 1979)

For the show we will be focusing on Lothar Wolleh's extensive and systematic lifetime project - Portraits of artists of his immediate environment. Without being commissioned but purely driven by the desire for a complete series of the art scene of the 60's and 70's in Germany and Europe, Wolleh photographed continuously until his sudden death in 1979. Wolleh photographed artists like Rene Magritte, Gerhard Richter, Günther Uecker, Georg Baselitz, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Lucio Fontana, César, Man Ray - to name but a few - and especially Joseph Beuys who is represented by 16 photographies.

Wolleh's portraits are the result of a deep intellectual and emotional engagement with the artist and his work. Each portrait was carefully composed before execution, so that even the smallest detail had its meaning. Wolleh always used the square format characteristic of the Hasselblad camera and the black integrated frame on the print. This method was often used in the 60's to denote the ultimate "truth" free of manipulation. Wolleh also categorically rejected the use flash or artificial light. For him the image was supposed to reflect an objective, and above all, an authentic detail of reality, even if he was directing this.

Wolleh studied applied Art from 1946 in Berlin, Weissensee at the Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst, an art school that had been created after the model of the earlier Bauhaus. His arrest by the soviet army for alleged espionage, abruptly ended this career. Lothar Wolleh was imprisoned in a GULAG under catastrophic conditions for over 6 years. He was allowed to return to Berlin in 1956. From 1959 Wolleh studied at the Folkwang Schule in Essen, under one of Germany's most well known photographers, Otto Steinert. Lothar Wolleh moved to Düsseldorf in 1962, the then centre for artistic production. From the late 60's he concentrated only on his own artistic projects. He also began to function not only as a photographer but began creating many collaborative projects with artists or acted as an art agent and began collecting art.

It was in these years that Lothar Wolleh developed deep and long lasting friendships with artists like Günther Uecker or Joseph Beuys, which led to collaborative artistic projects. An example of this are: the joint artists' books like Günther Uecker's Nagelbuch from 1970 or Unterwasserbuch in 1971 with Joseph Beuys. In many senses, what reflects the idea of collaboration most clearly, is the extensive collection of over-worked portraits by the different artists that Wolleh had photographed. Wolleh printed his portrait of the artist on canvas often in 100 x 100 cm and asked the artist to work with this. Fontana cut through his portrait, Günther Uecker worked a layer of sand into his portrait at the ocean, Man Ray applied as row of film rolls onto the canvas and Gerhard Richter over-painted his portrait completely. Through this collaborative project an interesting symbiosis between photographer and artist occurred at a very early time, still unique today.
Beyond this lifetime project Lothar Wolleh also was interested, similar to August Sander, in documenting people within their careers.

Image: Joseph Beuys, untitled (from "Unterwasserbuch"), 1971
40 x 40 cm, Gelatine Silver Print Vintage. Courtesy Galerie f5,6 Munich

Goethe-Institut
17 avenue d'Iéna, 75116 Paris
Opening hours: Mon-Fri 9am-9pm

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