The Walther Collection

The Walther Collection‘s inaugural exhibition Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity (2010): Zanele Muholi Claiming the label of activist-photographer, Zanele Muholi has worked to challenge social tolerance in South Africa, and elsewhere, by addressing issues of sexuality, gender, and representation in portraiture. Zanele Muholi’s strategy of appropriation and alteration engages with the archive of ethnographic motifs that are still being circulated to repr...esent Africa and Africans, repeating native stereotypes time and again. Miss D’vine I is naked to the waist and adorned in reproduction Zulu beadwork to reference this pictorial tradition. However, far from being sited in an ethnic enclave or in a pristine wilderness, Miss D’vine II poses gracefully against the dry, crumbling outskirts of a town. The detritus of city living strewn around her feetclad in blood-red stilettosstages a sharp contrast to the surrounding golden savannah grass. While referencing a particular pictorial legacy, the subversive gender queering set forth in the composition complicates historical representations of female positions and deflates the power of such oppressive images. Images: The artist. Courtesy of the artist and Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg. #thewalthercollection #exhibitionhistory #africanphotography #portraiture #TWCanniversary #throwback #tbt #throwbackthursday #eventsoftheself #zanelemuholi #museumfromhome

Six of the () images pun on Maurizio Cattelan’s ‘La Nona Ora’ (The Ninth Hour) (1999), a life-size effigy of Pope Johannes Paul II felled by a meteor, that caused a sensation when it was exhibited (). Interpretations of Cattelan’s sculpture range from accusations of blasphemy () to suggestions that it represents God punishing the pope; implies that the Catholic church may be destined to suffer the fate of the dinosaurs; or conveys simply the fragility of human life, such ...that even the pope could be subject to accidental death. () Fosso’s pope is untroubled by the meteor. Terry Smith Terry Smith‘s essay on Black Pope, as well as new essays and research by leading scholars and writers, are included in Samuel Fosso: Autoportrait, the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits by Samuel Fosso, published by Steidl and The Walther Collection. Images: The artist. Courtesy the artist and JM Patras, Paris. #samuelfosso #thewalthercollection #freshoffthepress #steidlbooks #africanphotograpy #photobook #selfportraits #terrysmith @steidlverlag @jmpatrasgalerie

Fosso’s ‘Black Pope’ invites us to consider something that has not happened yet, that might seem inherently implausible. Yet the rise of institutional religions in Africa () and the implosion of governance in the European and United States centers of these religions open the possibility of an African pope in the foreseeable future. Terry Smith Terry Smith‘s essay on Black Pope, as well as new essays and research by leading scholars and writers, are included in Samuel ...Fosso: Autoportrait, the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits by Samuel Fosso, published by Steidl and The Walther Collection. Images: The artist. Courtesy the artist and JM Patras, Paris. #samuelfosso #thewalthercollection #freshoffthepress #steidlbooks #africanphotograpy #photobook #selfportraits #terrysmith @steidlverlag @jmpatrasgalerie

In our new publication Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography, scholar Marianne Hirsch introduces the chapter Space, Materiality, and the Social Worlds of the Photograph, writing: The papers in this section follow the ways in which everyday images, when they are assembled in critical and meaningful ways, can also assemble lives and stories. They trace the determination and creativity with which image-makers construct stories out of fragments tha...t, in themselves, might be repetitive and even boring. They show the vicissitudes of those lives and social worlds over time and the different practices of recording them, in different communities and for different histories. But they also expose the politics that shape the technologies that produce and disseminate these very ordinaryyet also, in so many ways, extraordinaryimages, albums, and collections. Marianne Hirsch‘s essay, as well as new essays and research by leading scholars and writers, are included in Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography. Published by Steidl and The Walther Collection. Images: Courtesy The Walther Collection. #thewalthercollection #freshoffthepress #steidlbooks #photobook #vernacularphotography #mariannehirsch @steidlverlag

‘ALLONZENFANS’ achieves a discursive space ()namely, the reception of ‘tirailleurs’ by many Africans as a mercenary conquest army that supported the French imperial domination of Morocco, Algeria, Madagascar, and Indochina. How should one parse such an uneven receptiona league of heroic soldiers whose accomplishments were never fully recognized by their French peers, whose bloods debts went frequently unpaid, and yet who were often regarded with ambivalence by their own ...African brethren. James Merle Thomas James Merle Thomas’ essay on ALLONZENFANS, as well as new essays and research by leading scholars and writers, are included in Samuel Fosso: Autoportrait, the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits by Samuel Fosso, published by Steidl and The Walther Collection. Images: The artist. Courtesy the artist and JM Patras, Paris. #samuelfosso #thewalthercollection #freshoffthepress #steidlbooks #africanphotograpy #photobook #selfportraits @steidlverlag @jmpatrasgalerie @jamesmerlethomas

The Walther Collection‘s inaugural exhibition "Events of the Self: Portraiture and Social Identity" (2010): Maha Maamoun Through her manipulation of found materials, printed matter, photographs, and film, Maha Maamoun has intervened in the history of depictions of Egypt as circulated through postcards, travelogues, and cinema. Speaking directly to a tradition of exoticism and Orientalist image-making, Maamoun interrogates distances traveled. Her 2005 series "Domestic Tourism"... reshuffles imagery through strategies of subtle digital manipulation and appropriation, in ways meant to estrange and challenge viewers: "The Beach" finds a comically positioned and scaled paddle-boater tearing up the waterfront, leaving the viewer wondering how other swimmers in the photograph may be similarly cropped by the artist. "Felucca" likewise benefits from subtle sampling and remixing, but here Maamoun gestures toward an earlier pictorial tradition, namely the panoramic photographs of the nineteenth century, when Cairo's vistas were a destination on European Grand Tours. Images: The artist. Courtesy the artist. #thewalthercollection #exhibitionhistory #africanphotography #portraiture #TWCanniversary #throwback #tbt #throwbackthursday #eventsoftheself #Mahamaamoun #museumfromhome

Samuel Fosso’s ‘ALLONZENFANS’ () finds the artist intervening directly into this fraught chapter in France’s military history, a century-long period when the country drew able-bodied men from its colonial territories to support both its martial and imperial enterprises. Throughout the series of paired photographs, Fosso poses in alternating fashion, dressed in either a uniform from the First World War, () or the Second World War. () In this light, ‘ALLONZENFANS’ reads as ...the visual embodiment of these often-unsung tales, an extendable series of portraits of ALL Africans who have served. James Merle Thomas James Merle Thomas’ essay on ALLONZENFANS, as well as new essays and research by leading scholars and writers, are included in Samuel Fosso: Autoportrait, the first comprehensive survey of self-portraits by Samuel Fosso, published by Steidl and The Walther Collection. Images: The artist. Courtesy the artist and JM Patras, Paris. #samuelfosso #thewalthercollection #freshoffthepress #steidlbooks #africanphotograpy #photobook #selfportraits #monday @steidlverlag @jmpatrasgalerie @jamesmerlethomas

Wishing Artur Walther a Happy Birthday today!

You can order Samuel Fosso's "Autoportrait" and "Imagining Everyday Life," both of which are shortlisted for this year's 2020 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards, at our online store! http://walthercollection.square.site/

The Walther Collection’s two recent publications, Samuel Fosso’s Autoportrait and Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography, are shortlisted for the 2020 Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation PhotoBook Awards. Autoportrait is among 10 photobooks shortlisted in the category PhotoBook of the Year; Imagining Everyday Life is among 5 shortlisted in the category Photography Catalogue of the Year. Both publications will be exhibited in Paris by DELPIRE & CO... from November 528. The Walther Collection would like to express its deepest gratitude to Paris Photo, Aperture Foundation and DELPIRE & CO, and would like to thank very much this year’s shortlist jury Joshua Chuang, Lesley A. Martin, Susan Meiselas, Sarah Meister, and Oluremi C. Onabanjo. To learn more about our publications or to purchase, please see the link in our bio! #thewalthercollection #samuelfosso #vernacularphotography #photobook @aperturefnd @parisphotofair @delpireandco @steidlverlag @joshuachuang @la.martin_ @susanmeiselas @thesarahmeister @oluremi.onabanjo

Last week we said farewell to our formidable colleague and friend, Daniela Baumann, who served for five years as the Director of Exhibitions and Collections in Neu-Ulm. During her tenure she oversaw a rich program of exhibitions and publications with clarity and fierce intellect, mastering major installations at our museum campus and traveling all over the world as an ambassador for the Collection. Among the many notable projects, a few stand out: she co-curated Recent Histo...ries: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art (2017) with Remi Onabanjo and Joshua Chuang, in addition to serving as co-editor of its publication; she brilliantly organized the widely traveling collection show Structures of Identity, with its largest-ever iterations in Monterrey and Puebla, Mexico; and completing the most recent exhibition Then and Now: Life and Dreams Revisited (2019), which explored the Collection’s survey of Chinese photography. Daniela has also been in the center of numerous publications, spending countless hours in Göttingen at Steidl, and perfecting the process of bookmaking with her unparalleled eye for detail. Not only is Daniela a constant source of knowledge, advice, and friendship, she is truly at the height of her craft and subject. Thank you, Daniela, for your amazing years at The Walther Collection. We wish you all the best in your next endeavor!! Artur Walther Sara Softness Remi Onabanjo Troy Wong @daniyvo @sarasoftness @oluremi.onabanjo