The entire city

“The Entire City” is part of a new series of exhibitions dedicated to artistic photography in Germany. It brings together examples of subjective authorial photography, in which documentary moments encounter artistic interpretations. In contrast to the current widespread use of digitalization in making images, the six artist-photographers are committed to the observed, unmanipulated photographic image and to the aesthetic particularities of its photochemical production. The exhibition “The Entire City” takes its title from a work by Max Ernst, with its at once impressive and oppressive vision of a dream metropolis where natural space and cultural space merge. Urban culture and urban life also are the subject matter of our artists. They depict “their” city, the centre as well as the periphery, from entirely individual perspectives. They do not simply portray what can be seen; rather, they illuminate aspects of cultural situations, and also of social and political situations, in Germany today. Their common theme concerns questions of human identity and that of the urban environment. The photographers each approach urban culture, the current social and cultural state of the world they live in, with an individual yet distinctive eye: each records in his or her own way aspects of their reality that attract their attention. In so doing, they capture disparate components – cityscape, architecture, portrait, contemporary history, society – at times turning their gaze inward to people’s private spheres, at times looking outward at inner city or suburban spaces. But always they single out everyday situations, never the exceptional or exalted moments. And precisely for that reason, they enable their pictures to tell stories.