Exhibition January 26–March 30, 2024
Usual Opening hours Tue–Fr, 2–6 p.m., Saturdays vary
Saturday 30.3. last day. Open from noon–3 pm
Please make a note:
Talk between Sonja Palade (Museum Folkwang), Wolf Harhammer and Anna Holtz
Friday March 22, 2024, at 18:30. Please register, as places are limited.
In conversation, Wolf Harhammer will talk about how his portraits were created, how he experienced life among the showmen and what else there is to report. Questions may also be asked.
Sonja Palade studied media studies, photography and curatorial studies in Cologne, Hanover and Frankfurt. She has held various professional positions at art and cultural institutions, most recently at the DZ BANK Art Foundation and the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation. Since 2023 she has been a fellow in the "Museum Curators for Photography" program of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation.
Anna Holtz is an artist and lives in Berlin. As the artist's daughter, she is heavily involved in the rediscovery of Wolf Harhammer's work.
Esteemed Audience!
Esteemed audience! With this welcoming formula, circus directors advertise the upcoming attractions. With this title, we are putting our equally revered audience in the mood for the pictures of Stuttgart-based photographer Wolf Harhammer and our first exhibition in the new rooms at the Ziegenbein manufactory.
Wolf Harhammer (*1941 in Weimar) photographed circus performers and showmen in impressive black and white portraits at the Cannstatter Wasen and other fairgrounds between 1972 and 1976. His pictures allow us to look behind the curtain of time, giving us an insight into a strange, strange, almost forgotten world. As a prop man at the Sarrasani circus and balloon seller at the folk festival, he himself belonged to the "traveling people" for a while, as he writes in a short text to his book "Zwei Wirklichkeiten" (Two Realities), published by Trikont-Dianus Verlag in 1981. The pictures and negatives have lain in his "archive realities" archive boxes for long enough over the last five decades. It's time to raise the curtain! Clear the ring...come and be amazed!
We also owe the exhibition and rediscovery of Wolf Harhammer's works to his daughter, Anna Holtz, with whom we work very closely on the exhibition concept and realization.
Opening Friday, January 26, 7 p.m.
The artist is present
One further note: from February 9 to May 26, 2024, Wolf Harhammer will be making another, much larger appearance than in our modest rooms! Under the title "Two Realities", the Museum Folkwang, Essen, is showing an extensive selection of his prints to mark the inclusion of the pictures in the collection.