Benjamin KatzEntdeckungen – Discoveries – Découvertes

Benjamin Katz, born in Antwerp in 1939 to German Jewish parents, became famous for his penetrating portraits of artists such as Georg Baselitz, Jörg Immendorff, Joseph Beuys, James Lee Byars, Sigmar Polke and Gerhard Richter. No exhibition of the so-called German princes of painting – with some of whom Benjamin Katz has been associated for years – can do without his subtle portraits. Yet his archive, with more than half a million negatives from over 60 years of photographic work, holds much that is surprising: alongside conceptual photographic series, above all observations of everyday life – landscapes, views bearing the traces of industrial decline, architectural details, found instances of everyday poetry, or the momentarily absurd. Many untold stories are contained in these pictures, the most varied associations are called up, and the artist’s subtle wit always comes to the fore. The influence of early models, be it Brassaï, Rodchenko or indeed Cartier-Bresson, shines through again and again, yet Benjamin Katz’s pictures are above all narratives without words, committed to humour as a form of worldly wisdom and to the eloquent omissions of simple stories. One can only follow the results of this work with admiration – work that, in its concentrated looking, illuminates the rather incidental moments of life with brilliant acuity.

Exhibition:
Marta Herford, 13/6 – 3/10/21