Young German Photographers and the EPEA

Two new photo shows opened recently at Hamburg's Deichtorhallen. The first was Young German Photography, an annual competition for graduate students final year projects. Seven were chosen and there was quite a range of approaches.

Miriam Schwedt exhibited a series of lithographs.

 

These images were so beautiful in their quality of light and subject matter, I thought the rising tides looked like mountaintops. There were a few images of construction machinery which I felt could have been left out as they didn't fit with the rest of her work.

Luise Schröder had an interesting approach and she displayed a video of her process. She laid out a pile of old photo books and subjected them to the four elements, water, fire, wind and earth.

 From the debris she created images that looked like this.

The pictures were large scale, which meant the original images were blown up to many times their original size, losing image quality. I would have preferred smaller images, or perhaps framed bits of the debris. The transition to digital reproductions could, however be a comment on how the digital world is a fifth element.

Sara-Lena Maierhofer did a series exploring the phenomenon of the imposter. She analyzed the identity of the con artist Clark Rockefeller through unexpected photographic journey. Here are some of her findings.

 

The other work was less interesting to me, but I was impressed to see that five of the seven photographers were women.You can see more work from this and past exhibitions here.

The second show was the European Photography Exhibition Awards. The organization appointed twelve photographers to create work concerned with “European Identities”, providing them with grants and photography workshops to aid in creating the photo essays. 

Gabriele Croppi's created surreal scenes of a past era in his stark black and white architectural photographs.

Hannah Modigh's eloquent series on adolescence showed awkward and private moments of young adult lives. It was very personal and raw, but her soft colors and the lush surface of the papers she printed on gave it a nostalgic aura.

Marie Sjøvold's subject was motherhood and she explored the altered world view which a woman with a newborn child experiences.