Miron Zownir. Installation view. (Courtesy: Brotfabrik, Berlin; Photo: Vladimir Dudchenko).

Brotfabrik

Photography Noir, is a small exhibition featuring three artists: Miron Zownir, a German-born son of Ukrainian parents, whose works contrast extreme glam,  underground bohemia, and the children of the night in the 1970s New York; the Lithuanian Rimaldas Vikšraitis,  his works are chthonic Grimaces of the Weary Village from the 1990s; and the Ukrainian Aleksander Chekmenev with an equally chthonic take on the Donbas region from the same period. At times, Boris Mikhailov’s poetics of the 90s can be perceived, especially in Chekmenev’s works.

A good, dark, and free exhibition.

Ludwig Schirmer, aus der Serie Ein Dorf, 1950–1960 © Ludwig Schirmer/OSTKREUZ (Courtesy: Akademie der Künste, Berlin; Photo: Vladimir Dudchenko).

Akademie der Künste / Academy of Arts in Hansaviertel

Ein Dorf 1950–2022 / A Village 1950-2022 — Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, and Ludwig Schirmer

Ludwig Schirmer documented his native Thuringian village in the 1950s before becoming one of the key advertising photographers in the GDR. His daughter and son-in-law also photographed the same village and, after that, founded a photo agency. Only much later were Schirmer’s early images rediscovered. A saga with recognizable characters across time. Brilliant.

The same venue shows an exhibition celebrating photography as a documentation medium, with an obligatory Walter Benjamin quote in the curatorial text. This part of the show features some well-established artists, like Tobias Zielony and Boris Mikhailov. Tobias Zielony (b. 1973, Wuppertal), a well-known German documentary photographer, artist, and film director who represented Germany at the Venice Biennale in 2015 (together with Olaf Nicolai, Hito Steyerl und Jasmina Metwaly/Philip Rizk, curator Florian Ebner). Boris Mikhailov (born in 1938 in Kharkiv, then USSR, currently Ukraine) lives in Berlin and is one of the most influential and decorated East-European photographers to date. Winner of the Hasselblad Prize (2000), Citibank Photography Prize (2001; since 2005, it is called Deutsche Börse Photography Prize), Goslar Kaiserring Award (2015), and others. He represented Ukraine at the Venice Biennale in 2007 and 2017. Among those whom I hadn’t known, I quite liked Bérangère Fromont with a brooding installation and Pınar Öğrenci with collages.

It seemed, however,  as if all of the museum’s lighting was used in The Village part of the show, so the main exhibition was dim and blind, lacking proper navigation (and, in the case of Boris Mikhailov, where text plays an important role, translations).

 Poor exhibition realization. Overall  — a disaster.

Johanna Jaeger, “Clouds Passing By,” 2020. 300 x 530 cm, 3+1 AP. (Courtesy: Schwarz Contemporary).

Schwarz Contemporary

A pop-up exhibition by Johanna Jaeger. The gallery owner has worked with her for 10 years and published catalogs. A sort of decorative conceptualism through photography. This exhibition consists of diptychs. The left panel features pictures of ink smears on a tray full of water. The right panel shows the dried pigments at the bottom of the same tray. It’s like a downplayed Paul Graham of sorts; time, in general, is an important collaborator for the author, which provides coherence to her work. She also makes large-scale installations, which is a plus. I liked one of her earlier projects: rows of uniform, monochrome sunset colors sourced from amateur photos taken by her mother.

In the back room, there’s a group exhibition of gallery artists. A large piece by Jaeger is mounted under the expensive museum-grade glass, priced at €22,000.

Barbara Probst. “Exposure #186: Kunstmuseum Luzern. Lucerne, 06.23.23, 12:57 p.m. 2023”. Installation view. Photography. (Courtesy: Kuckei + Kuckei; Photo: Vladimir Dudchenko)

Kuckei + Kuckei

The gallery has reclaimed its ‘first’ space on Linienstrasse. The current exhibition features Barbara Probst (b. 1964) at a museum-level price range. Quadriptychs about viewing the ‘here and now’ from multiple perspectives; inventive. €46,000 for a four-part piece, edition of 5, and some are already in their final numbers.

Richly expensive. I approve.

Natalia Carstens. Places in Between – Perspectives of a Reality. Photography. (Courtesy: Natalia Carstens).

Alte Münze / Old Mint
Invisible Lines – Female Photoclub

We attended their event last year and liked it. Such a grassroots initiative with no money originated by the female photographers. This year, there were ads in the subway and possibly elsewhere. It opened at 6 pm, and at 6.15 pm, the queue was already on the stairs down to the ground floor. The exhibition was packed, so the organizers couldn’t let more people in, and rightly so. Two went out, and two came in. We stood for half an hour to enter, and when we left, the queue stretched across the whole ground floor, then across the courtyard, etc. In total, 1300 people visited the opening on that day.

Natalia Carstens showed empty cinemas last year; now they are glass and concrete office buildings. A deeply atmospheric stand by Marlene Gawrisch about Auschwitz-Birkenau.

In short, the exhibition has outgrown its format.