Ciphers of a City – Photographs by Hans Meyer-Veden

With interventions by photographer Michael Meyborg, the mpz film group and street art artist TONA

May 20, 2022 to February 13, 2023 at Jenisch Haus Hamburg

For more than three decades, the photographer Hans Meyer-Veden captured the city on the river in expressive images, selecting his motifs with a sure eye: from architectural ensembles and details in the narrow alleys of Altona and between the Kontorhäuser of the Speicherstadt, to technical apparatuses and installations in the harbor, to nature in the city and countryside and the ever-appearing surface of the Elbe. Born in Stade in 1931 and moved to Altona in 1982, Hans Meyer-Veden captured the urban space in its diversity and change until his death in 2018 in his own visual language, in which the absence of people is particularly striking. In stark contrast to the representatives of classical street photography, Meyer-Veden did not focus on the inhabitants of the city in his photographs. He himself explained this special attitude with a "radical change in the use of photography," which he felt was necessary in 1982 when encountering the big city: away from the "aesthetics of a representative moment" towards an "observation directed at the whole."

The exhibition is complemented by three interventions: a group of works by photographer Michael Meyborg shows the life of primarily Turkish guest workers in Altona around 1980, the film Terrible Houses in Danger by the mpz film group depicts the protest of squatters on Hafenstraße until 1985, and the works created since 1999 by street art artist TONA invite a contemporary form of visual engagement with urban society on the river.

An exhibition by the F.C. Gundlach Foundation

Jenisch Haus
Baron-Voght-Straße 50
22609 Hamburg
040 – 82 87 90
info@am.shmh.de

Opening hours:
Monday 11 AM - 6 PM
Closed Tuesdays
Wednesday to Sunday 11 AM - 6 PM