The photographer Leonore Mau - From Hamburg into the world
Jenisch Haus
27 November 2016 to 23 April 2017
The work and life of Leonore Mau (1916-2013) are marked by her incessant travels. Her photographs of four continents were printed in geo, mirror, time and star. On the occasion of the photographer's 100th birthday, an exhibition in the Jenisch Haus will retrace the photographer's travels.
Leonore Mau uses her camera to capture manifestations of cultural identities. Her photographic style follows the heterogeneous aesthetics of her motifs. Leonore Maus images are witnesses of cultural intertwining as a result of slavery and European colonisation and as harbingers of globalisation as we know it today. Their most famous motifs come from African-American syncretistic rituals and the approach to the mentally ill in neo-colonial Africa.
Starting point for her is Hamburg: here she buys her first Leica in installments and meets her travel and life companion Hubert Fichte, portrays his personal environment from the literature business and Reeperbahn Milieu, documents Hamburg's architectural development in the 1960s and photographs the day in the life of an independent dock worker for a photo film. Her last series of enigmatic still lifes Fata Morgana is also created here.
The excursions between 1960 and 1985 turn Leonore Maus's photographs into a socio-cultural inventory of a very special kind that encompasses almost half the world from Hamburg.
The exhibition The Photographer Leonore Mau - From Hamburg to the World is a cooperation of the S. Fischer Foundation, the Historical Museums Hamburg and the F.C. Gundlach Foundation and will be on view at the Jenisch Haus from 27.11.2016 - 23.04.2017.