“As an age of all-pervasive image making, we still do not know exactly what pictures are, what their relation to language is, how they operate on observers and on the world, how their history is to be understood, and what is to be done with or about them.” - W. J. T. Mitchell: Picture Theory We try to find the milestones of truth in the set of countless images, but we use the senses of past ...

This year, I would like to focus more energy on tilt, our collective of four photographers: Tim Gassauer, Manu Gruber, Marcus Wend, and myself. We met during our studies at Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie in Berlin, where we were part of Göran Gnaudschun’s class and graduated together in May 2024. For the past year, we have come together to develop each other's work, collaborate on commissions, ...

Since I began taking photos, I’ve found that my most meaningful experiences often come during spontaneous walks. There’s a simple urge to step outside, break away from the routine of daily life, and explore with my camera in hand. I often hop on a nearby train or bus, riding until something outside the window catches my eye. When I see something interesting, I get off and wander, open to whatever ...

Strom explores the Oder River habitat through the lens of change. Spanning approximately 854 kilometers (531 miles), the Oder flows through the Czech Republic, Poland, and Germany, originating in the Sudetes Mountains and emptying into the Baltic Sea. Serving as a natural border between Poland and Germany for much of its length, the river is a vital waterway for trade and transportation. It is ...

Exploring the intersection of love and money with Lea Greub We periodically invite our alumni, artists we have featured in the past, to share their new work and projects with us. We first featured Lea Greub’s work in our Guest Room curated by Daniel Boetker-Smith and Tanvi Mishra on the theme "(make) belief" in October 2023. We discovered Greub's photographic essay series, "The Business of Love" ...

Uncanny Valley is an ongoing project that explores the contradictory relationship humans have with nature. We find ourselves deeply embedded within it, yet wildly estranged from it. This project examines the absurdity of our interactions with the natural world, where we transform it into something consumable, controllable, and ultimately disposable. We maintain the illusion of connection by ...

Lithics is an exploration into the prehistoric origins of human behaviour. Travelling through caves and quarries, forests and valleys across Europe, the work seeks traces of our shared humanity in landscapes once inhabited by Neanderthals. Central to the work is the uniquely human awareness of mortality. This awareness shapes how we live, think, and act. It manifests in our desire to transcend ...

Secret to Stirring up a Breeze is a photographic meditation that explores the intricate tapestry of urbanisation, family, and religion in Fuzhou, a south coastal city that is my hometown and a landscape of change. This project, unfolding over seven years, captures the evolution of Fuzhou through my periodic returns, which have shaped my dual perception as both insider and outsider. Through the ...

In this series of works, the artist enlarges the negatives onto photographic paper and then processes the paper using alternative techniques. What he pursues is not just a representation of the fading of memories, but a deeper exploration and presentation of the selective nature of memory. The combination of this process with the act of photography is an attempt by the artist to express the ...

The latest finds from our community artists’ photobooks “In Focus” is a quarterly series of reviews in which we hunt down and peruse the worthy publications off the shelves of our community artists. Each month, Der Greif is selecting a set of photobooks from our talents’ pool. Compiled here are the most recent releases from our community artists Colin Martinez, Zara Pfeifer, Benedetta Ristori ...

The picture material for the work came from social media where Londoners sell second-hand items or subletting rooms. Looking at the broad collection of belongings/rooms for sale/rent, images of the vendors appear to materialise. A student, selling a guitar and textbooks and another person offering whiskey and a designer leather jacket. Each image triggers Sophie Calle-esque voyeurism: who is the ...

The name of this series is a Chinese idiom used to describe the fatality of the human condition. The photographer seeks to combat the anxiety of appearance conveyed by the mass media and what he calls the fetishism of merchandise “to let go of harsh self-recrimination and happily accept our own identity and uniqueness, fearlessly and delightfully.” This series takes the form of a handmade book, ...

Daqing, the “Oil Capital of China,” stands as a testament to the relentless spirit of its people and the nation's journey. The name Daqing means Great Celebration and refers to the tenth anniversary of the People's Republic of China. My grandfather's photos from the 1960s offer an intimate look at the faces of Daqing, individuals who bore witness to the transformative boom following the ...

Topiary, derived from the latin word topiarius, a creator of different areas through ornamental landscapes. A horticultural practice that refers towards a dialogue with a living sculpture formed by time, growth and small interventions that hold them in defined shapes. This notion of forming and being formed (wi)th(rough), a constant dialog of the material presence, is something that corresponds ...

Perhaps a house to grow up in is the framework for us being cast into the world. When returning to that house is no longer possible, it persists to live on within our imagination, haunting our dreams and beckoning us to revisit our past. When a house transforms, so does our memory. How do the materials that sustain our memories remember themselves? Can we re-inhabit a space through ...

“Protektorat” by Silvia Rosi opens today at C/O Berlin C/O Berlin Artist Talent Award 2024 winner Silvia Rosi, a past Guest Room collaborator, debuts her thought-provoking project Protektorat in her first solo exhibition in Germany, opening today at C/O Berlin in the Amerika Haus. Drawing upon archival materials housed in the National Archives of Togo, Rosi illuminates the pervasive spread of ...

This text is an excerpt from a research publication called “Sprouting-through”, self-published in 2023. Written through the process of a seed, it touches upon the ambiguous nature of being more-than-human, art in the Anthropocene, artistic practice situated in-between self and other, human and non-human, inside and outside and other blurry boundaries. A mix of rooted thoughts and wilder ...

Metal seed, industrial shell. Plants were observed, measured, and grown behind glass. Regulated. Patented, owned. Seeds modified in such a way that, after a single use, they are unable to reproduce. At the inception of photography, the cyanotype photographic process was used for a better understanding of plants by archiving their direct images. Algae, ferns in deep blue sea imprinted, revealing ...

Pupa, a stage of a metamorphic insect’s life (such as a butterfly, a moth, or a bee), occurs between the larva and the imago. It is when an insect is enclosed in a cocoon or a protective covering and undergoes internal changes - in other words, a transformation - to reach a new stage. This project aims to treat photography as if it were in a pupa: in a stage of transition, temporality, and ...

I continue to talk about my ongoing project It’s Darkest Before the Dawn. After being denounced for my public anti-war stance in August 2022, I began experiencing nightmares. In these dreams, masked SWAT teams with machine guns burst into our flat and dragged me away in handcuffs amidst the screams of my children. The fear for their safety has haunted me ever since. Determined to secure a better ...

“Anchor in the Landscape”: Adam Broomberg and Rafael Gonzales’ book capturing Palestinian identity through millenary olive trees The olive tree symbolizes Palestinian identity, culture, and resistance. It sustains the livelihoods of more than 100,000 Palestinian families, serves as a cornerstone of traditions and identities, and has long been a target of destruction and theft. Since 1967, ...

Der Greif in partnership with MPB presents Marinos Tsagkarakis, Guest Room Scholarship winner Der Greif and MPB introduce Marinos Tsagkarakis, who received our Guest Room scholarship from The Sustainable Darkroom & Tamsin Green, curators of our “New Grounds” Guest Room. Tsagkarakis’ selected image is an extract from the series “Strawberry Blue”, exploring the complex interactions between human ...

The photographs from my ongoing project It’s Darkest Before The Dawn can be described as subjective documentary photography. In the surrounding landscapes, I find reflections of my state and my thoughts on war, death, emigration, and the loss of home, creating a self-portrait even though I am not physically present as a subject in any of the images. However, it is impossible to discuss current ...

On 24 February 2022, my country, Russia, started a full-scale war in its neighbouring country, Ukraine, while concurrently intensifying repression against its own citizens. Because of my public anti-war stance, I began to receive threats and was eventually denounced. Fearing the increasing possibility of imprisonment and the harrowing chance that my young children would be left without a mother, ...

As a kid, I always had a camera in my hands. I remember going around and photographing everything I found interesting. Aged 12, I knew I wanted to become a photographer: not just any photographer, but a war photographer. I saw it as the noblest form of photography, one where the photographer is ready to sacrifice everything to report on things that matter. Travelling to places most people would ...