Kupferstich-Kabinett: World views on paper

Fotografie des Arbeitszimmers von Albert Einstein

World views on paper. Photography and the Object

The permanent exhibition »Concept and Encounter: The World around 1600« offers insight into the Kunstkammer, an early collection of artefacts of nature and culture by the Electors of Saxony. Its aim was to offer access to and provide encyclopaedic information about the entire world in miniature. With the series »World Views on Paper« the Kupferstich-Kabinett refers to the permanent exhibition by presenting works from its vast collection, enriched by selected loans.

Exhibition Site Residenzschloss

DATES 14/09/2016—22/01/2017

Invented as a medium of reproducing reality, photography is closely linked to the Kunstkammer’s pretense of universal representation. The intervention »Photography and the Object« is dedicated to the relationship between photography and the material world. From the 19th century to the present, it highlights the creative possibilities of photographic representation, from strict portrayals to subjective staging. These include the isolation of individual objects in the supposedly neutral setting of the studio and the effects of light and shadow, as well as fragmentation or the visual illusions that can be achieved with the medium – occasionally raising doubts about its own abilities.

As a medium, photography in the digital age is less and less tied to external realities. It links back to the world of things by becoming a collected item present in museum spaces like never before, asserting itself in the context of all of those objects at the beginning of today’s art collections.