A Picture Book

Located in Essen, Germany, and one of today’s leading international art museums, the Museum Folkwang’s renowned photography collection was established in 1979 with nearly 3,000 works by Otto Steinert. Steinert is well known for his enigmatic images, which emphasize light and shadow and are quite prescient in their use of now-common conventions like blurring and multiple exposures. He was the founder of the Fotoform movement in postwar Germany, which actively reinvigorated Bauhaus photo techniques. The collection has since been expanded with an additional 6,000 images, including work by Helmar Lerski, Germaine Krull and Peter Keetman. A Picture Book presents a survey of the Folkwang collection, organized into eight chapters structured around the ideas of Theme, Period, Method, Medium and Materials. Essayists contextualize the collection and expand upon the ideas raised by the thematic chapters and a history of the collection is explored by Editor and Director of the museum’s Department of Photography Ute Eskildsen. Text by Ute Eskildsen, Clément Chéroux, Wolfgang Brückle, Reinhard Braun, Florian Ebner, Robert Knodt, Hans-Jürgen Lechtreck, Jürgen Müller, Christopher Phillips, Klaus Pollmeier.