past exhibitions

GOOD WIFE

Antonia Gruber

18.10. -  23.11.2024

In her work BLUE DAHLIA_, Antonia Gruber explores stereotypes and social role models of women, citing visual material from the 1950s and 60s. Her pictures show both the once predominant image of women, often labelled "good wife, wise mother", as well as the image of a self-confident and independent woman in the present. Gruber reworks the originally black-and-white photographs with the help of artificial intelligence by applying her own biometric passport photo to the protagonists like a mask. In doing so, she leaves the resulting glitches (image errors) in the works. In this way, she destabilises the belief in the beauty of the posed images of women. This challenges viewers to question current images of women. The title BLUE DAHLIA_ can be understood as an allusion to the unsolved murder in 1947 of the 22-year-old Hollywood actress Elizabeth Short, known as the "Black Dahlia Murder". The longing for the blue flower, a primeval romantic motif, becomes a metaphor for the striving for emancipation in this series.

36° - Summerexhibition

26.07. -  28.09.2024

Hans Lux

Antonia Gruber

Paolo Costa

Renate Scherra

F.C. Gundlach

Christoph Honig

Monika Baumgartl

Heinz Neumärker

Christian Coigny

Markus C. Hurek

Ralf Schilberg

Karl Blossfeldt

Giovanni Gastel

Lightcatcher

ANIMALS

Walter Schels

May 8, 2024  -  July 6, 2024

Galerie noir blanche is showing the famous series of animal portraits by Walter Schels from 8 May to 6 July 2024.

Walter Schels is considered one of the most important contemporary photographers in Germany. 

Large parts of the works on display have already been presented in major solo exhibitions at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich and the Landesmuseum Darmstadt.

The photographer Walter Schels (*1936 in Landshut) grew up with animals. As he says, this shaped his relationship with animals and his photography. Schels' first animal portraits were taken in the mid-1980s: large companies such as VW, Panasonic and Blaupunkt commissioned Schels to take pictures of chimpanzees and dogs for advertising campaigns - often in funny poses and almost always in colour. He secretly photographed his black and white portraits back then without the art directors realising. Later, he also photographed animals without a commission until the 2000s. Schels became famous for his character studies of celebrities such as Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys and Angela Merkel. Always in front of a white or black studio background, without a smile, looking directly into the camera. ‘The fact that he simply transferred a convention of representation developed from the human image to animal photography is a provocation,‘ says photo historian Klaus Honnef about Schels’ animal portraits. They give the viewer the feeling of entering into a dialogue with the animal - whether sheep, bear, frog or rabbit - on an equal footing, as it were.

dialogue. For him, eye contact, says Schels, is the key to accessing the essence of his subject with both human and animal subjects and therefore ‘the key to a good portrait’. But because animals cannot be instructed to look into the camera, an animal portrait is ‘a matter of luck’. At the noir blanche gallery in Düsseldorf, Volker Marschall is showing Schels' classic animal portraits as well as experimental series that the photographer has been consistently generating from “failed” shots since the 1970s: Double exposures, overprints, snapshots as well as images from a series that Schels photographed in 1976 with a small plastic camera to stick together in the snow-covered English Garden in Munich. 

GIOVANNI GASTEL

March 8, 2024  -  April  27,2024

Galerie noir blanche is showing a major Giovanni Gastel exhibition with the iconic works of the famous Milanese photographer from 8 March 2024 to 27 April 2024.

This exhibition is the first major presentation of Giovanni Gastel's works in Germany.

Giovanni Gastel is one of the most internationally recognised names in Italian photography. For thirty years he worked with the most important fashion magazines. He lived and worked in Milan when his professional commitments did not take him around the world. Before switching to the digital format, he worked mainly in large-format Polaroids and with the 20 × 25 optical bench. A connoisseur of experimentation, he had introduced ‘old mix’ techniques, the ‘cross’ technique, pictorial reworkings and ironic still life into contemporary fashion photography.

Heir to the aristocratic and refined style that characterised the old Milanese nobility (he is the nephew of Luchino Visconti), he reflected culture, elegance and charm in his style. Sometimes refined, dreamlike and symbolic, sometimes surreal and demystifying, his paintings narrate an unstoppable path of creative research that, read backwards, reflects the evolution of customs over the last twenty-five years. But his poetic writings, with which he was already intensively involved at a young age, are also known to a broad public.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Gastel worked on advertising campaigns for the most important Italian fashion houses such as Versace, Missoni, Tod's, Ferragamo and many more. His success in his native Italy also took him to Paris in the 90s, where he worked for brands such as Dior, Nina Ricci, Guerlain as well as in the UK and Spain. Although his career began in the fashion world, Gastel quickly felt the urge to express himself through artistic projects.

In 1997, he was given a solo exhibition at the Milan Triennale, curated by art critic Germano Celant. The Triennale exhibition catapulted Gastel to the forefront of the photography world, and from the 2000s his professional success was consolidated when his name appeared in specialised magazines alongside those of important Italian photographers such as Oliviero Toscani and Ferdinando Scianna and international legends such as Helmut Newton, Richard Avedon, Annie Leibovitz and Jürgen Teller.

Professional success and recognition opened the doors to another side of Gastel's photographic repertoire that had remained unexplored until the late 2000s: portrait photography. This in turn culminated in an exhibition at MAXXI in Rome in 2020, featuring the faces of many people from the world of culture, design, art, fashion, music, entertainment and politics that Gastel had encountered in his 40-year career. The remarkable portraits include Barack Obama, Ettore Sottsass, Roberto Bolle and Marco Pannella.

Giovanni Gastel was on the Board of Directors of the Museum of Contemporary Photography, an institutional partner of the Milan Triennale, and on the Board of Directors of the IEO-CCM Foundation until his sadly untimely death.

Giovanni Gastel died on 13 March 2021 Mar2021.                                       The works of Giovanni Gastel are exclusively represented in Germany by Galerie noir blanche.

POSITIONS

F.C. Gundlach

Giovanni Gastel

Walter Schels

Monika Baumgartl

Lightcatcher

Renate Scherra

Werner Bokelberg

Alexander Basta

Hans Lux

Werner Eisele

Markus C. Hurek

Christoph Honig

November 10,2023 - February 10, 2024

ENERGY

Monika Baumgartl

August 25. - October 21. 2023

Monika Baumgartl (*1942) is a pioneer of artistic phase photography and Concrete Photography and was represented with her artworks twice at the documenta (1972 + 1977).... She uses serial photography and long exposures, photographic formats that demonstrate possibilities of seeing behind, so to speak, or seeing the other side. Processes become visible that had previously been repressed, (blossomed) in obscurity, swallowed by everyday life or covered over by business-like normality.  With her photographs, Monika Baumgartl is a pioneer of the vision of a generation that has now penetrated both micro- and macro-space, that has landed on the moon or exchanges messages at the speed of light.                             

Monika Baumgartl's work is about movement, at other times about the visualization of time or the New York World Trade Center in a time rapport. There is always movement, with moving the blooming desire for lively play and simultaneous measuring of time.

TOUR DE FRANCHE

Walter Schmitz

July 15 - August 12  2023

The award-winning black-and-white series "Tour de France" (Walter Schmitz won the first prize for this series at the "World Press Photo Award" in 1992) does not show the shining heroes of the world's most famous bicycle race, but the energy-sapping mountain stage on the Col de Tourmalet, which demands everything from the professional cyclists.
Walter Schmitz's photographs are characterised by the movement and dynamics of this sport.

Walter Schmitz's works range from landscapes to reflections on the sensitivities of cities and nature, documentaries and essays from the world of work and youth and pop culture. He is particularly fond of his reportages and essays from the world of sport and his photographic depiction of movement and moments. Depth and lightness, drama and poetry characterise his images.

Rheinstadion Freibad

Photographs of the legendary swimming pool at Rheinstadion, Düsseldorf
25 years after the closure

July 16 - August 12  2023

The Round House

Peter Keetman and Alfredo Sarabia jun.

May 25 - July 08  2023

copyright  estate Peter Keetman,

Foundation  F.C. Gundlach

In the exhibition "The Round House" we show two different styles and generations of photography.  Peter Keetman, one of the pioneers of German photography, with his famous series "Volkswagenwerk Wolfsburg 1953", next to the works of Alfredo Sarabia Jr, one of Cuba's young and exciting photographers.
In cooperation with the F.C. Gundlach Foundation, we are showing the artworks of Peter Keetman, which are currently exhibited in a large show of works at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg.
The exhibition at Galerie noir blanche is also so special because only a very few prints of each motif are still available for sale worldwide.
The clear and graphic pictorial compositions of Peter Keetman are juxtaposed with the dynamic photographs of Alfredo Sarabia Jr. that are bursting with joie de vivre.
The link between these two contrasting positions is the VW Beetle.

The exhibition shows 12 selected photographs by Peter Keetman and 20 selected photographs by Alfredo Sarabia jun.

Peter Keetman (1916-2005) occupies a central place in post-war German photography.
At the end of the 1940s, Keetman was one of the young savages of the fotoform group, who, inspired by avant-garde experiments of the pre-war period, wanted to develop a new language of photography based on formal reduction, the creative power of light and the subjectivity of individual experience of the world. Together with Otto Steinert and the other members of fotoform, Peter Keetman stands for the awakening of photography.          With sensitive, poetic photographs that are at once graphically rigorous and highly modern, he became one of the pioneering photographers of the 1950s and 1960s. Keetman's photographs are characterised by his photographic vision, his will to design, with which he divided the image surface as a section of reality into line, surface and structure, his analytical eye and his technical precision. His formative influence on photography can still be felt today.
 

Excerpt from the text by Sebastian Lux, F.C. Gundlach Foundation
copyright Peter Keetman
"Volkswagen Factory Wolfsburg" 1953
F.C. Gundlach Foundation

Alfredo Sarabia Jr. is a well-known Cuban photographer and professor of photography at the state-run Universidad de la Artes (Havana).
He has already received numerous international exhibitions and awards.
The works show a pictorial cycle around his old VW Beetle, which he inherited from his father when he was a child.
He is the son of the famous Cuban photographer Alfredo Sarabia.
This project is based on a photograph taken by his father, Alfredo Sarabia Sr. in the 1990s. Alfredo Sarabia Sr. was an important Cuban photographer. Early on, his son Alfredo Jr. accompanied him on his travels through Cuba. The series "The Round House" is the result of his family travels with his wife and 4 children. This series creates a very emotional and strong connection between his memories and his experience as a photographer.
Alfredo Sarabia Jr. is exclusively represented in Germany by Galerie noir blanche.

ICONS

March 03 - May 13  2023

F.C. Gundlach

Evelyn Richter

Walter Schels

Hans Lux

Monika Baumgartl

Giovanni Gastel

Renate Scherra

Werner Bokelberg

Walter Schmitz

Lightcatcher

Alexander Basta

Frederic Auerbach

Markus C. Hurek

Armin Rohde

Alfredo Sarabia

Christoph Honig

SX 70 - Polaroids

Hans Lux

October 07 - December 22  2022

Hans Lux would not be Hans Lux if he did not always surprise the viewers of his work.

Snapshots, curiosities and impressions from his many journeys captured on countless SX70 Polaroids.

Some are taken from the archive of over 7500 Polaroids and are edited and alienated in a very special way.

Hans Lux would not be Hans Lux if he did not surprise visitors to the exhibition and present some very special works.

The photographer Hans Lux was Peter Lindbergh's ‘teacher’ and was closely

with him for decades. Hans Lux influenced an entire generation of photographers.

With great ease and a sure instinct for the right moment, Hans Lux captures situations and moments in his pictures.

Galerie Noir blanche represents Hans Lux exclusively and is showing very special works in this exhibition.

FERNweh

Renate Scherra

July  29 - September 24   2022

FLORAL

Christoph Honig

May 15 - July 23 2022

Christoph Honig gives the traditional genre of "flower still life" a new, contemporary twist by photographing the flowers, for example, in a corresponding vase and in the transition from floral splendour to wilting. The whole thing is staged in a dark, not further defined pictorial space and under the influence of as little light as possible.

The wilting bouquet in the vase becomes the next, more developed motif. The interplay of flower shape, vase shape and colours and staged in an undefined space with the sparse light draws attention to this one, special appearance of flower and vase at the centre of the staging. The photographing becomes a gesture of paying attention to the everyday, the trivial and yet infinitely beautiful.

Combining the innovative aspects of painting, the free forms, colour spaces, boundless fictions and abstract constructions with the technical competence and reproduction accuracy of photography is a rewarding and extremely exciting undertaking that greatly captivates and inspires Christoph Honig. The aim is not to create "look a likes" and to photograph "as if painted".

copyright  Hannes Schmid, CH

MUSICIANS

February 25 - April 23  2022

Walter Schels

Hans Lux

Evelyn Richter

Hannes Schmid

Monika Baumgartl

Alexander Basta

Joop Greypink

Markus C. Hurek

Avraham Eilat

"JECKES - Die Deutschen Israels"

November 12  2021 - January 29  2022

"Jeckes - The Germans of Israel".

They are still a community today, the "Irgun Jeckes", German-speaking Jews who fled to Palestine from the Nazis.

The elders fled to Palestine from German-speaking countries in the 1930s and 1940s. Younger ones moved here in the 21st century. Before the Second World War, about 2,000 German-speaking residents arrived, then during the Nazi era up to 60,000, at which time they made up a fifth of all immigrants.

Jeckes - alluding to the formal suit jackets that the new immigrants often wore even in the Mediterranean heat - are the name given in Israel to the German and German-speaking Jews who came to establish settlements in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine.

For some "Jeckes" it was a long-cherished wish, as they grew up in families shaped by Zionist ideals. For many others it was less easy. A large part of the arrivals did not leave Germany voluntarily. For many it was a matter of survival.

The German heritage has very much entered the cityscape in Haifa - in the form of Bauhaus architecture, which has been given a new lease of life in Israel's Mediterranean metropolis in both senses of the word by the architects expelled from Germany in 1933. Mediterranean curves and pilotis on the ground floor to guarantee a little breeze in the heat.

But German-born or German-speaking Jews were also involved in the construction of several kibbutzes.

The works by Avraham Eilat presented in the exhibition are dedicated to these two focal points. The Israeli artist and photographer Avraham Eilat shows the historical Haifa with its beauty of Bauhaus architecture and his picture series "Kibbutz", taken in the 1960s and 1970s, with impressive photographs. Photographic contemporary documents of an impressive density that is so rare.

The exhibition project is part of the programme of the anniversary year "321 - 2021: 1700 Years of Jewish Life in Germany" and is supported by the association of the same name, which organises the anniversary year. Federal President Frank Walter Steinmeier is the patron of this anniversary year.

F.C. Gundlach

"VISIONNAIRE"

Parisian couture of the 60s

September 3 - November 6  2021

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        nb

        21

April 30 - June 26  2021

Peter Lindbergh  /  Hans Lux  /  Evelyn Richter  /  Walter Schels

Renate Scherra  /  Armin Rohde  /  Marianna Rothen  /

Alfredo Sarabia jun.  /  Alexander Basta  /  Christoph Honig  / 

Ralf Schilberg  /  Paulo Greuel  /  Mario Marino

SAMBURULAND
Mario Marino

November 01 2020  -  April 17  2021

WASSERLUST°
Kerstin Kuntze

August 21 - October 24  2020

The German photographer Kerstin Kuntze discovered the medium of water in a very special and unique way for photography. It creates impressive motifs with a density and strength that are rarely seen.

Hans Lux

"without words"

March 13  - August 15  2020

The photographer Hans Lux was the Master and Mentor of Peter Lindbergh and was closely associated with him for decades. Hans Lux has shaped a whole generation of photographers.
The Gallery noir blanche represents Hans Lux exclusively and shows the very first exhibition and presentation of Hans Lux's photographs.
A wonderful exhibition with private and personal insights into his decades of photographic work.

HAUTE COUTURE OF THE SKY

Christian and Helga von Alvensleben

With this exhibition Christian and Helga von Alvensleben show the beauty of the vulnerable atmosphere of our earth. The series was created in the Canary Islands, at the Tropic of Cancer, where hot Sahara winds meet the cold northeast Passat at the end of the year.

Large-format color photographs tell of the power of nature, of the play of light with moisture and desert dust.
The cloud images remind the photographers of Albert Camus' entry in his 1953 board diary: “I saw the sun on the bottom of the sea and the waves dominated the stormy sky. "

All image titles are borrowed from ESA and NASA and are understood to be understood
as a tribute to the search of scientists and astronauts for a new, perhaps better world in infinite space.
After decades of archaic themes photographed in black and white, the color work HAUTE COUTURE DES HIMMELS finds a place alongside the MEERESFRÜCHTE series shown in 2009 in the Kunsthalle St. Annen in Lübeck and also photographed in color. (MEERESFRÜCHTE is a 2005 large-scale photo project about the Civilization waste in the world's oceans).

All unique pieces (large-format DITONE color prints (approx. 140 x 95 cm) created by RECOM ART in museum quality) are framed in a frame with museum glass, they are signed, numbered and stamped by the photographer.

Christian von Alvensleben is one of the best-known German photographers.

Designers Digest named him "(Photo) -Designer of the Year" in 2002 and novum reported: Christian von Alvensleben is one of the most constant sizes of German photo design and one of the most universal.

In 2005, a work that had already received an award from the Art Directors Club (ADC) was proposed for the 2006 Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany.

In over 35 years of photography work, the German ADC alone has over 80 awards for individual work, including many gold medals and even, unusual for a photographer,

1993 Grand Prix. In 2009 he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Art Directors Club (ADC).
 

PUROS

Joop Greypink

The well-known and multi-award-winning Dutch photographer Joop Greypink photographed famous and unknown Cubans with their landmark of the "Havana" with a large-format camera in the format 8x10 inch (20x25cm)

Museum prints in a very strictly limited edition of 8x10 inch analog black and white negatives.

"PUROS"

Puro means Spanish cigar. But also "real". Puro is a synonym for Cuban cigars. Cuba finds its national identity in the cigar, it is both cult and commercial. It is a cultural component. And she always shone and still does today. It has the greatest appeal to intellectuals, writers, musicians and adventurers from all over the world.

Smoking a cigar and dealing with tobacco runs like a myth through all layers of Cuban society. Today there is (still) a generation of older women and men who, up to the beginning of the last century, represent this long tradition. It is the "faces of Cuba" in which the melting pot of many nationalities is shown directly and without make-up.

That is Cuba "puro".

Joop Greypink captured this spirit of Cuba in photographs. With the help of Cuban friends, he researched women and men who have been dealing with the tradition of tobacco and cigar for a long time - these are farmers and cigar makers, locomotive drivers and musicians, writers and traders. They represent tradition and myth, but are also a mirror of contemporary Cuban society.

These carefully selected people were photographed by Joop Greypink directly, without make-up and unaffected. They look into the camera and make contact with the viewer with their eyes. In this direct contact between the viewer and photography, the physiognomy of the photographed people makes their individual history but also the common "Cuban" legible.

This photo series is an encyclopedia of the Cubans, which shows how the photo can reflect the spirit of a society and its people.

"Yemen"

Photographs by Renate Scherra
 

"Yemen"

Photographs by Renate Scherra

The photographer Renate Scherra shows a wonderful and special exhibition with pictures from Yemen.

Renate Scherra's photographs invite the viewer on a journey through time. A journey into the archaic world of the Orient. Images that can no longer be seen in this form. Photographs of a fascinating landscap
and architecture, first-hand impressions of people and their culture. Many of the old cultural sites have been destroyed by decades of armed conflict between the various ethnic groups.
The analogue photographs were taken on two trips in 1989 and 1992. The selected motifs are in absolute form in Renate Scherra's own laboratory on barite / museum paper, the premier class of hand prints

Small edition has been enlarged.

Renate Scherra (born 1938), "the Grande Madame of the German photographer scene" had over decades the specialist laboratory for black and white photography in Düsseldorf, where very much many well-known German and international photographers such as Helmut Newton, Thomas Ruff and other internationally renowned photo artists had their films developed and enlarged.

The photographer Renate Scherra convinced with her analogue photography from 1971 to the present day and the creation of high quality prints on barite / museum paper without digital processing in her own laboratory.

With the proceeds of the exhibition, the gallery noir blanche supports the organization "Doctors without Borders" in their work in Yemen.

"bonjour été"             

Pictures of a summer

July 06 - September 07  2019

"duesseldorf faces"

black tide / white tide"

Photographs by Ralf Schilberg

April 27 - July 06  2019

"duesseldorf faces"

black tide / white tide

In his portrait series “duesseldorf faces” Ralf Schilberg works very intensely with the dark.

A large part of the image and the person are hidden in the dark.
Darkness has always fascinated people. It is, as it were, a place in the semantic underworld with a diffuse information situation - where we suspect rather than we know.
All we know is: "We are somewhere" or "There is something". And that is precisely what makes the darkness so particularly attractive photographically. Because all of our sensory input channels are on alert, and what suddenly emerges from the darkness attracts our full attention.
Light and shadow are in a dialogue, embedded in a harmonious relationship, which appears thanks to the photo. "It's like the invisible becomes visible."

We also show photographs from his "black tide / white tide" series.

A game of the tides. However, the focus is not on the spectacle of nature, but on a model that Ralf Schilberg stages on the beach in black and white clothes. A game of strong contrasts while simultaneously depicting nature in finely graded shades of gray.

Ralf Schilberg poses the model in a very reduced and stylish manner and creates a strong tension between man and nature and the extreme of black and white.

black tide / white tide"

"He couldn't swim or read"

Photographs of the old swimming pool at Rheinstadion Stockum
20 years after the closure

Photographs by Volker Marschall

 "Favorite pieces "