Candida Höfer: Contexts. A Dresden Reflection

An exhibition by the Research Department in co-operation with the Kupferstich-Kabinett and the Semperoper

Jede der vierzehn

Each of Höfer’s fourteen new photographs imagines a specific context of her practice as an artistic photographer: process, organisation, and techniques of production; cultural, scientific, and historical backgrounds; anthropological and geographical references.  Each work of Semper Oper Dresden interacts with woodcuts, engravings, and etchings by such artists as Albrecht Dürer, Daniel Hopfer, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi. This gives rise to questions regarding similarities and differences in artistic thinking about various types of architecture and spaces as venues for cultural rituals. Spaces for rehearsal, storage, performance, leisure, and working inside the opera house, thus, become a lens to look at the context of the museum as a place of research, collecting, archiving, exhibiting, and working.

Die Korrespondenz

On the one hand, by presenting the artist's contemporary practice alongside works from the collection, a connection is established between her photographs and the prints featuring two-dimensional representations of space. On the other hand, the environment of the venue itself becomes a subject of reflection with an exhibition architecture of Kuehn Malvezzi Architekten that creates a context-conscious presentation. Through this interplay of different contexts, each image is able to retain the openness to interpretation that is characteristic of Höfer’s works.

Candida Höfer (born in Eberswalde in 1944) In 1973, she was admitted to the Düsseldorf Art Academy, where she belonged to the first generation of artists studying in the class of Bernd and Hilla Becher, now regarded as the international photographic avant-garde of post-war modernism in Germany. In September 2024, she was awarded the Käthe Kollwitz Prize of the Academy of Arts, Berlin, Germany. The artist lives in Cologne.