Dirk Reinartz: Photographing, what is

From May 16 to September 15, 2024 at the LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn

Together with the Deutsche Fotothek in Dresden and the LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn, the F.C. Gundlach Foundation will present the first major retrospective of the renowned photojournalist and visual artist Dirk Reinartz starting May 16, 2024.

Dirk Reinartz (1947-2004) was one of the most important photographers and photojournalists of his time. With numerous publications in magazines such as Stern, Merian, Zeit-Magazin, and art, as well as representation by the VISUM photo agency, Dirk Reinartz's photographs had a reach that is almost unimaginable today. Through his unmistakable visual language, which is particularly evident in his free serial works, Reinartz succeeded in capturing the feeling and spirit of an era while also shaping it visually. His subjects revolved around major social questions; as a photojournalist, he aimed to make social and political issues visible.

As a conceptually planning photographer, he searched for traces of the past in the present. He often developed his subtle photographic narratives in familiar and geographically close surroundings. A central theme in Reinartz's work is his engagement with Germany: from small-town life, exemplified by Buxtehude, to the great social reorientation after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. In publications such as Kein schöner Land (1989) or Bismarck. Vom Verrat der Denkmäler (1991), Reinartz explored German culture of remembrance and the persistence of the past in the present. In totenstill (1994), an examination of the structural remnants of Nazi concentration camps, he questioned the representability of horror.

Equally poignant are Reinartz's photographic depictions from around the world, from his early work for Stern in Japan or Greenland, to his reporting from Ireland, Indonesia, or Romania, to self-commissioned works in the USA. For example, the series Action Theatre (1976) reveals a largely unknown Dirk Reinartz under the influence of 1970s New Color Photography.

The exhibition brings Dirk Reinartz's work to life along the fields of tension that occupied him throughout his life, such as power/powerlessness, proximity/distance, history/present.

The book Dirk Reinartz. Fotografieren, was ist will be published by Steidl Verlag accompanying the exhibition. The exhibition and book are the result of research and review of the entire estate and archive material, which, comprising approximately 10,000 prints, 370,000 negatives, over 100,000 slides, and extensive archival documents, was acquired by the F.C. Gundlach Foundation and the Deutsche Fotothek in Dresden in 2021.

The exhibition vernissage will take place on May 15 at 7 PM. Admission is free!

LVR-LandesMuseum
Colmantstraße 14-16
53115 Bonn