The Walther Collection

The Walther Collection
Established	June 2010
Location	Reichenauerstrasse 21 ; Neu-Ulm, Burlafingen, Germany
Website	walthercollection.com

The Walther Collection is an art foundation dedicated to the critical understanding of historical and contemporary photography and related media. Through a program of international exhibitions, in-depth collections, original research, and scholarly publications, The collection aims to highlight the social uses of photography and to expand the history of the medium. The Walther Collection retains a three-gallery museum campus in Neu-Ulm, Germany, a Project Space in New York City, and produces an expansive traveling exhibition program worldwide. The collection's exhibitions put in dialogue selective oeuvres of key European and American photography alongside expansive holdings of African photography and video art, with contemporary Chinese and Japanese photography and media art, and vernacular photographic imagery from across the globe. The collection's exhibition program is complemented by public lectures and screenings, international scholarly symposia, and a critically acclaimed series of catalogs and monographs co-published with Steidl.

The Collection

The Walther Collection is defined by its desire to establish a cross-cultural discourse in the fields of photography and media art, ranging across temporal and geographical differences to instigate in-depth analysis of the relationship between the history of the photographic medium and notions of subjectivity and social identity. By pairing works from African or Asian artists with that of their western counterpoints, The Walther Collection reimagines the poetic and political dimensions of the global photographic archive, with its diverse histories and changing meanings. Such an approach allows the collection to offer new perspectives on the legacy of anthropological and ethnographic visions of the Other.

Featuring historical imagery alongside modern and contemporary works, and including select pairings with practitioners from across the globe, The Walther Collection puts forth a nuanced consideration of the ways that photography has provided a structure for exploring the bounds of identity across chronological, spatial, cultural, and social contexts.

With over 15,000 works, the Walther Collection is considered one of the most significant holdings of contemporary Chinese, African, and vernacular photography in the world.

The Walther Collection was founded on a nucleus of Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) photographers such as August Sander and Karl Blossfeldt, and the industrial photographs of Bernd and Hilla Becher.^[3]Central to the beginnings of the collection also include contemporary German artists Thomas Ruff, Candida Höfer, and Thomas Struth, all students of the Bechers. The methodological documentary approach favored by the artists of the school of Neue Sachlichkeit and the Kunstakademie Duesseldorf suggested a new, conceptual framework of taxonomies that became a defining influence on The Walther Collection's acquisitions and gallery presentation.

For over three decades, Artur Walther traveled extensively across the globe, forging connections with artists and often accompanied by key curators within the field of photography. With a deeply investigative and research-driven approach, he focused on the work of practitioners in regions whose work provided significant contributions to expanding the history of the photographic medium.

The core of the collection's Chinese works were acquired in the 1990s, often shortly after their production, and highlights some of the most significant works of Chinese performance photographers, including that of the Beijing East Village artists and Ai Weiwei, Cang Xin, Huang Yan, Song Dong, Zhang Huan, and Zhuang Hui. At a time when few western collectors took interest in the artistic landscape of the East, Walther was drawn to the experimental work coming out of the 1980s and 1990s by artists probing the socio-political changes they were witnessing. With continued research and artist engagement up to present-day, the collection charts the various trajectories of photography and video art in China from the end of the Cultural Revolution to the globalized works of contemporary media artists.

Beginning in the early 2000s, Walther began a dialogue with curator and critic Okwui Enwezor, who curated the first extensive African photography exhibition, In/Sight: African Photographers, 1940 to the Present (Guggenheim, 1996). In the following years, the two began a long-term examination into photography across the African continent. Extensive travels with Enwezor throughout the continent resulted in the core works within the collection's holdings of African photography, including with masters in studio portraiture Seydou Keïta, J. D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere, Malick Sidibé, and Samuel Fosso, as well as South African social documentary photographers David Goldblatt, Santu Mofokeng, Mikhael Subotzky, Guy Tillim, and Jo Ractliffe. The modern and contemporary African works featured in the collection now range from the 1950s to the present day, cutting across colonial and post-colonial histories while investigating the multivalent facets of social identity, questioning notions of belonging, and examining socio-political concerns of migration, lineage, and the legacies of colonialism.

The Walther Collection also significant holdings of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century cartes de visite, postcards, albums, vintage portraits and books from Southern and Eastern Africa. Walther was inspired by Santu Mofokeng’s The Black Photo Album and the way in which it created a ‘counter-archive’ of historical South African studio portraiture to expand his collection to include historical photography. The holdings of historical African photography are part of The Walther Collection's ongoing process of revising conceptions of photographic history according to Hal Foster's idea of the “archival impulse,” whereby confronting the archive, new systems of knowledge can be created.

While the collection's engagements in these areas is ongoing, since 2015 it has accrued vast holdings of vernacular photography, non-fine art imagery. Rather than focusing on aesthetics, this view of vernacular photography concentrates on communal or ritual behaviors. It encompasses a broad social history, spanning from 1839 to the present, and retains a global scope, with particular attention to South Africa and the United States. By presenting exhibitions and initiating discussions around vernacular photography, the collection examines how photographic representations reinforce or subvert prevailing roles of class, gender, sexuality, and race.

Taxonomy and seriality are key organizing and aesthetic motifs in the collection. Rejecting Henri Cartier-Bresson's notion of the “decisive moment” in favor of ordering images according to types, movement, structure or time, the typological and serial approaches to photography interrogate and expose a set of formal similarities and methods, turning from pictorial representation toward systems of knowledge. Moreover, the formal concept of the typology allows The Walther Collection to stage a comprehensive conversation between artists of disparate geographic and cultural backgrounds. Bringing together portraits by modern photographic masters such as August Sander, Seydou Keïta, and Richard Avedon, or juxtaposing Karl Blossfeldt's studies of plant forms, Bernd and Billa Becher's typologies of industrial architecture, and J.D. ‘Okhai Ojeikere's encyclopedic documentation of Nigerian hairstyles, such pairings open up a dynamic comparison that reveals not only similarities but also surprising new perspectives.

Exhibition Spaces

The New York Project Space

Opened in 2011 and located in the West Chelsea Arts Building in New York City, The Walther Collection Project Space serves to extend the Collection's mission and program to American audiences. By functioning as an incubator, the Project Space allows The Walther Collection to stage dynamic and current exhibitions along with curatorial talks, gallery walkthroughs and screenings.

The Neu-Ulm Campus

The Neu-Ulm Museum space consists of three buildings: the White Cube, the Black House, and the Green House. The galleries of the 10,000 square-foot campus are distributed around three different buildings named for their architectural character.

The main building, the White Cube, was designed by the Ulm-based architectural firm of Braunger-Wörtz, and is a light-filled three-story structure consisting of a 5,000-square-foot gallery on the sub-ground level and a smaller, 1,500-square-foot gallery and reading room on the second floor. The Green House is a renovated two-level structure. The house remains exactly as it was built more than half a century ago, and its façade is covered with green ivy. There are two modest galleries on each floor, and their intimate scale allows for the exhibition of small-format works. The Black House is a one-level, bungalow-style structure with no windows on the sides of the building facing the street, lit by skylights and a glass curtain wall in the back.

Traveling Exhibitions

Travelling exhibitions are central to the Walther Collection's global scope and desire to facilitate dialogue within and outreach beyond the field, expanding perspectives and engagement. The Walther Collection has participated in major art fairs such as Rencontres Africaines de la Photographie, Biennale Africaine de la Photographie (2017–2018); the Photography Show presented by AIPAD (2017); and Rencontres d'Arles (2014).

Research

The Walther Collection has organized a symposium for each major exhibition series, cultivating a space for research and scholarly discussion between leading international academics, curators, artists, and cultural producers in the field. The result of these symposia form the basis of critical and scholarly writing featured in the collection's publications.

November 10, 2012: Encounters with the African Archive

NYU Tisch & University College London

Scholars were invited to discuss the colonial, ethnographic, anthropologial and artistic categories that are often used to describe historic photographs of Africans. Participants include professors Awam Amkpa of NYU, Jennifer Bajorek of Hampshire College, Elizabeth Edwards of De Montfort University, Chika Okeke-Agulu of Princeton University, Erin Haney of the University of Johannesburg, Salah Hassan of Cornell University, Hlonipha Mokoena of Columbia University, Gabi Ncobo of the University of the Witswatersrand, John Peffer of Ramapo College, and professor emeritus Michael Godby of the University of Cape Town. The symposium also drew on the experience of curator Riason Naidoo of the South African National Gallery, and curator emeritus Christraud Geary of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Tamar Garb, Durning Lawrence Professor in the History of Art at University College London, and Deborah Willis, Chair, NYU Tisch Department of Photography & Imaging, co-chaired the event.

October 21, 2016: Beyond the Frame: Contemporary Photography from Africa and the Diaspora

Columbia University

Participants included professors Sandrine Colard of Columbia University, John Puffer of Ramapo College, Z. S. Strother of Columbia University, Allison Moore of the University of South Florida, and PhD candidate Antawan Byrd at Northwestern University. Additional contributors included Artur Walther, founder of The Walther Collection; critic Emmanuel Iduma of School of Visual Arts; artists Andrew Esiebo and Dawit L. Petros; Eva Langret, head of exhibitions for Tiwani Contemporary Gallery; Missla Libsekal, founder and editor-in-chief of Another Africa; Brendan Wattenberg, managing editor of Aperture Magazine; John Fleetwood, director of Photo: and Joburg Photo; and Yvette Mutumba, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Contemporary And. The symposium was co-chaired by Kerryn Greenberg (Tate Modern) and Chika Okeke-Agulu (Princeton University) and co-organized by The Walther Collection, The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Art Gallery, and the Department of Art History and Archeology, Columbia University.

November 3, 2017: Chinese Photography and Media Art Since the 1990s

The Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Participants included professors Wu Hung of the University of Chicago, Pepe Karmel and Jonathan Hay of NYU, and John Rajchman of Columbia University. Talks were also given by PhD candidates James Poborsa at the University of Toronto and Stephanie Tung at Princeton University, critic Xin Wang, and ICP curator Christopher Phillips. Additionally, the symposium featured a conversation between media artist Lu Yang and journalist Dawn Chan from Artforum. The event was co-chaired by curator and adjunct NYU Professor Christopher Phillips and Ying Qian, assistant professor at Columbia in the department of East Asian Languages and Cultures.

October 19–20, 2018: Imagining Everyday Life: Engagements with Vernacular Photography

Barnard College and Columbia University

Participants include Ariella Azoulay of Brown University; Geoffrey Batchen of University of Wellington; Ali Bedhad of University of California, Los Angeles; Elspeth Brown of University of Toronto; Clement Cheroux of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Lily Cho of York University; Nicole Fleetwood of Rutgers University; Sophie Hackett of Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett of New York University; Thy Phu of Western University; Christopher Pinney of University College London; Leigh Raiford of University of California, Los Angeles; Shawn Michelle Smith of Art Institute of Chicago; Drew Thompson of Bard College; Laura Wexler of Yale University; and Deborah Willis of New York University. Co-organized by Tina M. Campt, Claire Tow, and Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Africana and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Barnard College; Marianne Hirsch, William Peterfield Trent Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University and Professor in the Institute for Research on Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Columbia University; and Brian Wallis, curator at The Walther Collection.

Publications

The Walther Collection has a longstanding publication program with Steidl, with the aim of creating resources and generating new platforms for those in the field of photography.

Catalogs and monographs are produced in close collaboration with artists, scholars and critics, and draw from existing and commissioned scholarly essays, primary sources and interviews.

In 2017, Recent Histories: Contemporary African Photography and Video Art was selected as one of the Best Photo Books of 2017 by the New York Times, and in 2018 was nominated for an ICP Infinity Award in the Critical Writing and Research category.

References

External links

Official website
https://www.facebook.com/TheWaltherCollection/
https://www.instagram.com/walthercollect/
https://twitter.com/walthercollect?lang=en
https://www.artsy.net/the-walther-collection
http://www.artnews.com/2015/11/06/photographic-memory-artur-walther-has-what-may-be-the-worlds-largest-and-most-important-private-collection-of-african-photography-2/
http://www.anotherafrica.net/art-culture/the-walther-collection
https://www.contemporaryand.com/magazines/okwui-enwezor-and-artur-walther-on-the-recent-histories-of-african-photography/
https://www.icp.org/infinity-awards/artur-walther
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/30/magazine/the-best-photo-books-of-2017.html
https://museumnetwork.sothebys.com/museum/the-walther-collection-project-space-new-york

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