Since December 2022, I have been working on the Tasvir Archive in collaboration with fellow Iranian scholar and artist, Sara Abbaspour. This is an extensive, nonprofit project focused on the history of image-based art and photographic practices in Iran. The archive gathers critical information on Iranian photographers, image-based artists, scholarly articles, and analyses. (The project is ...

I have a deep appreciation for literature, letters, quotes, and short writings by others. They continually feed my mind as I work with archives. At times, a poem or personal letter sparks the beginning of a new piece, linking individual and collective memories. These texts often help me reflect on abstract experiences I have not personally lived. “Words fade in the face of a hidden ...

I have been practicing photography for many years, and about six years ago, I began transitioning from taking photos to making images. This distinction has become central to my practice, allowing me to work more closely with archives, found images, and historical documents. This shift has expanded my process, enabling deeper engagement with historical images and offering new ways to reflect on ...

My practice is characterized by working with a diverse array of historical images, whether through the curation of new archives or the reinterpretation of existing ones. I firmly believe in the transformative power of historical imagery to inform the present and shape the future. By scrutinizing images of the past and the thoughts they evoke, I aim to challenge conventional interpretations of ...

As a young professional at 27, I have been exploring myself and the world through photography for about 13 years. The reflex of looking back is a way of remembering photography’s emergence and widespread use. Today, as I reflect on my 27 years, I have prepared a selection of photographs taken since I was 14. Along with this post going live, I will have already started the setup for my new ...

I have become a person who experiences life based on the existence of my emotions. Trying to see my own feelings in different ways is what brought me closer to portrait photography. In this series, I try to write about my current feelings in water through images by exposing the notes I took in my handwriting onto the photographs I took in the bathtub. "I always think of life as a space of ...

Der Greif in partnership with MPB presents Murat Kahaya, recipient of the Guest Room Scholarship Der Greif introduces the Guest Room Scholarship awardee, Murat Kahya, who was selected by Guest Room curators Christiane Monarchi and Eva Eicker. In the context of the given theme "Wortbildsalat / word-image-salad," Kahya's featured image from the series "Seesaw" contributes to the collective ...

When I think about photography, I believe that before I create any image, I observe the world through the lens of all the experiences my embodied being has accumulated. However, another possibility lies in the sustainability of images and their ability to renew themselves. As the subject of the photograph, as an artist, I can choose to revisit the same image with new experiences and insights ...

Photography takes shape in my life as an experience of grasping, transforming, expanding outward, or withdrawing inward through the camera, which has become an extension of my body in the context of my passionate relationship with seeing. It has been approximately 10 months since I opened my solo exhibition in Istanbul this past January. During this time, I’ve been reflecting on the exhibition ...

Using contemporary terminology, the series You Have a Place Above My Head, which the artist has been developing since 2019, explores the potential sexuality of everyday objects discovered during walks in Istanbul."Genre painting, in the literature of art history, is defined as productions realized on canvas with paint, presenting everyday life shaped in domestic settings to the viewer. The series ...

Greif Alumnus Lukas Städler reflects on his photographic practice and current exhibition at Fotografiska Berlin We periodically invite our alumni, artists we have featured in the past, to share their new work and projects with us. Lukas Städler was among the artists selected for Der Greif X Grisebach “New Positions” Online Photography Auction. His pursuit of contemporary aesthetics through ...

Tim Grabham (AKA iloobia) is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist who has independently produced still and moving image work for over 30 years. Comprising of short film, animation, photography and installations, as well as documentary and long-form features, his work has been presented internationally at cinemas, festivals, TV online and in galleries. Ongoing interests in his work include ...

They gather, five souls woven in light, a sisterhood etched in stars. Each a luminous thread, they dance, they dream, they rise - an eternal constellation. “The more we connected through our bodies and our skin, the more this sensation emerged: acceptance as an extension of feminine qualities - a gentle yet profound strength rooted in the understanding that we are enough, just as we are, through ...

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 Fabio Barile, Yoshi Kametani, Tyler Zeleny, and a ...

I began the process of developing black and white analogue film in July 2018 and colour analogue film in August 2020. Using a film developing kit in my bathroom, I’m interested in inviting imperfection and unpredictability into the image-making process, allowing the materiality of the film to coexist with the photographic image. I also deliberately soak the film rolls in various fluids causing ...

Making collage is a way for me to decompress my brain when I feel overwhelmed. I started this process organically by taking elements from my own photography. It’s an intuitive process, with no specific intention or purpose, simply being spontaneous in the moment. I knew it was soothing for me, but I didn’t know why. Only until last year when I got diagnosed with Adult ADHD, it started making ...

Thank You For Playing With Me dives into researching the concept of modern beauty, documenting portraits of Enam Ewura Adjoa Asiama and Vanessa Russell from 2019 to 2022. This project is an intimate record of that journey. I do not want anybody to feel the way I felt. Growing up in Taiwan, the pressure to conform to a standard beauty in Asia was relentless and it took a toll on me physically ...

About a year ago, I began a new project that originated with a major life change, which was having our baby. She is now one, and since just before she was born, I began making pictures which meant to primarily quell or reveal the anxieties I have about becoming, and now being, a parent. The focus in the series is explicitly not her, though she exists around the periphery, but it is more about me ...

In 2023 I was fortunate to have a solo exhibition at Reminders Photography Stronghold in Tokyo, which is run by Yumi Goto. We worked together to curate my work for the show, and it was here that I was first able to utilize the big lightboxes. I think of the lightboxes as a further attempt at abstraction of the landscape. And so I chose three images that represent satellite imagery. They play ...

A photo exhibition in collaboration with Der Greif kicks off Münchner Kammerspiele 2024/2025 season “Auf nach Woanders” ("Off to Elsewhere") is the title of the 2024/25 season of the Münchner Kammerspiele, which was inaugurated on September 14th with a photo exhibition in their foyer at Therese-Giehse-Halle. “Auf nach Woanders” stems from the call opened by Der Greif to its worldwide community ...

“For the real scandal of Galileo’s work lay not so much in his discovery, or rediscovery, that the earth revolved around the sun, but in his constitution of an infinite, and infinitely open space.” - Michel Foucault, Of Other Spaces: Utopias and Heterotopias Heterotopias are real places and other spaces, they are layered and often mirroring what is outside. Foucault often describes them as ...

Images of faces preoccupied with the telescope seem to be performances. Though in other ways, the person also seems to have left their body altogether. One’s face contorts or responds, exclaims, or mirrors the object of their gaze. We sit here on Earth, in the same place as moments earlier, but when gazing at the sun we have also been transported nearly 93 million miles away. In two places at ...

Ouroboros, a term which refers to the intertwining makeup of the universe, sets the cosmos as a stage to locate the margins of our perception. This work of photography and installation portrays a repetitive loop between looking towards outer space and attempting to understand our planet. I pair images of people, scientific tools, and interiors, alongside images of abstracted landscapes of earth ...

I am currently working on a project that I did last August as part of an artistic residency called “No Ritmo do Lugar” (In the Rhythm of the Place) in Elvas - south of Portugal. In addition to the challenge of photographing in unknown territory that I have no memory of, it was enriching to work around the theme of the “Border” in a free and comprehensive way. Elvas borders Spain and its natural ...

Whenever I think of the beach or the sea, my memories are divided into three layers: The first is childhood: the endless vacations, the long days and naps in tents, the half-awake state, the wind whipping the drying towels and the voices: the mothers warning their children, the street vendors and, of course, the sadness of the high tides during the day and, of course, the last day at the beach ...