Part II of the exhi­bi­tion Foto­gra­fi­sche Inku­na­beln aus der Sammlung Kahmen / Photo­gra­phic Incun­ables from the Kahmen Coll­ec­tion is devoted to further indi­vi­dual key pieces from an impres­sive coll­ec­tion.
The first part of the show high­lighted pioneers of photo­graphy; now, in the second, the focus shifts to juxtapose some indi­vi­dual stances from that early period, such as those of Hugo Erfurth, Otto Steinert or Wols, with repre­sen­ta­tives espe­ci­ally of more recent deve­lo­p­ments in the history of the art – Pidder Auberger, Cécile Bauer, Frank Gaudlitz, Ulrich Wüst and others; and, alongside them, photo­graphs by primarily visual artists who have made forays into the photo­gra­phic medium, such as Hans-Peter Feldmann, Henry Moore or Oskar Schlemmer.
The plans for this two-part exhi­bi­tion are Volker Kahmen’s own. After the collector’s death earlier this year (Volker Kahmen 1939 – 2017), Frank Boehm took on the co-ordi­na­tion of the second part according to Kahmen’s draft.
Volker Kahmen’s standard work Foto­grafie als Kunst (1973; Photo­graphy as Art, trans. Brian Tubb, London: Studio Vista, 1975) has been trans­lated into four languages. The greater part of his photo­graph coll­ec­tion was acquired by the Getty Museum in Los Angeles in 1984, with the exception of some few items which the collector was loth to part with. These formed the core of a new photo­graph coll­ec­tion which he continued to extend until his premature death.