CIPHERS OF A CITY Photographs by Hans Meyer-Veden

 

Photographs by Hans Meyer-Veden
With interventions by the photographer Michael Meyborg, the mpz film group and the street artist TONA
 

Jenisch Haus
May 20, 2022 - February 13, 2023

Photographer Hans Meyer-Veden has captured the city on the river in expressive images over more than three decades and selected his motifs with a sure eye: from architectural ensembles and details in the narrow alleys of Altona and between the warehouse buildings of the Speicherstadt, to technical apparatus and equipment in the port, to nature in the city and the countryside and the ever-changing water surface of the Elbe. Born in Stade in 1931 and moved to Altona in 1982, Hans Meyer-Veden fixed urban space in its diversity and change until his death in 2018 in his own pictorial language, in which the absence of people is particularly striking. In stark contrast to the representatives of classical street photography, Meyer-Veden did not make the inhabitants of the city the focus of his photographs. He himself explained this particular attitude with a "radical change in the way photography is used," which he felt was necessary in 1982 when he encountered the big city: Away from the "aesthetics of a representative moment" to an "observation directed at the whole." The exhibition is supplemented by three interventions: A group of works by photographer Michael Meyborg shows the life of mainly Turkish-born guest workers in Altona around 1980, the film "Terrible Houses in Danger" by the mpz Filmgruppe brings the protest of the squatters on Hafenstraße into the picture until 1985, and the works of the street artist TONA, created since 1999, invite a current form of visual examination of urban society on the river.

An exhibition of the F.C. Gundlach Foundation

Jenisch Haus
Baron-Voght-Strasse 50
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