Photography exhibition celebrating Wim Wenders

Düsseldorf is the birthplace of the great German filmmaker and photographer Wim Wenders, and as a tribute to him to celebrate his 70th birthday it is holding the exhibition “4 Real & True 2. Wim Wenders. Landscapes. Photographs.” at the Kunstpalast Museum.



The Kunstpalast museum in Düsseldorf in collaboration with Wim Wender Images and the Wim Wenders foundation is displaying a selection of 79 large-size photos taken over his lifetime by the director of “Wings of Desire” and more recently “The Salt of the Earth” about Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado.





Because as Wim Wenders himself says, “photographic work is the other half of my life”, something completely separate from his filmmaking work. So visitors to the exhibition at the Kunstpalast museum in Düsseldorf have the opportunity of enjoying his photos of often lonely places and landscapes, snapshots whose absence of people encourages observers to use the image as the setting for their own imaginary story. 



For Wenders these photos are the successful interaction of light (phos) and painting (graphein) and therefore an opportunity to portray a specific moment in time; they have all been taken using an analogue camera, without artificial lighting or tripod. They also express the huge love of Wenders for painting that also had a profound influence on his filmmaking work.



In an interview at the opening of the exhibition on 18 April - you can visit it until 16 August 2015 - Wim Wenders stressed the difference as he sees it between taking photos with a Smartphone and with a camera. His response really drives home the voracious appetite we seem to have for images at this period in time: “(taking photos with a mobile phone) is a contemporary mode of communication, but it's not photography. It's like taking down notes. You can only really shoot photos in peace and quiet. Taking all the time you need. And treating the location with respect."



You only need to see his photos to realise this fundamental difference at a glance. Here the image goes beyond being an object and returns to its elemental power as the beginnings of imagination.

(Christiane Bürklein)

Exhibition: “4 Real & True 2. Wim Wenders. Landscapes. Photographs.”
Location: Kunstpalast museum, Düsseldorf, Germany - http://www.smkp.de/
Dates: from 18/4 to 16/8/2015