Like a Whirlwind: The Gender Plays by Marie Høeg & Bolette Berg @ f3 – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin

LIKE A WHIRLWIND 

The Gender Plays by 

Marie Høeg & Bolette Berg

f³ – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin 

June 14 – August 25, 2024 

Berg & Høeg 

In the studio: Marie operating the camera,

Bolette photographing the scene, 1895–1903

© Collection of Preus Museum

Berg & Høeg 

»Water Scene«. Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg

in a rowing boat in the studio, 1895–1903

© Collection of Preus Museum

Berg & Høeg 

Marie Høeg and her brother Karl crossdressing, 1895–1903 

© Collection of Preus Museum

Berg & Høeg, 

Bolette and Marie playing with friends, 1895–1903 

© Collection of Preus Museum

The exhibition LIKE A WHIRLWIND – The Gender Plays by Marie Høeg & Bolette Berg presents unique cross-dressing photographs from the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The photographers Bolette Berg and Marie Høeg founded the Berg & Høeg photo studio in the southern Norwegian town of Horten in 1894. The couple spent their entire adult lives working and living together. They published their fairly conventional portrait and landscape photographs as postcards. The Norwegians achieved international fame posthumously through their early photographic experiments with gender roles, which are probably rightly regarded as the first such complex photographic examination of the subject of cross-dressing.

When their estate was auctioned off in the 1970s, the Norwegian collector Leif Preus acquired the glass negatives of the two photographers. In addition to photographs of landscapes and reproductions of artworks, there were two boxes labeled "private" showing Marie Høeg, Bolette Berg and their siblings and friends posing in front of the camera. These shots had nothing in common with traditional portrait photography. Playful, humorous and full of joie de vivre, the photographs radically and cheekily question the ideals of femininity of the 19th and early 20th centuries as well as the gender roles of the time. The topicality of the imagery and the visual exploration of the theme, which is comparable to contemporary artistic practice, is astonishing. The two photographers take up stereotypes in a witty and fresh way and transform them into frivolous photographs with the help of props and costumes.

The modern approach of the photographers testifies to their self-confidence and a playful examination of social norms; at the same time, the estate makes it clear that the photographs were only intended for private use during their lifetime, not for the public. The photographic studio was the safe space, where the protagonists of the pictures could present themselves in a self-determined manner.

The Preus Museum, the Norwegian National Museum of Photography, manages the estate of Marie Høeg and Bolette Berg and owns the original glass negatives in its collection. The exhibition at f³ – freiraum für fotografie shows digital reproductions of this unique material, which is on display in Germany for the first time.

f3 – freiraum für fotografie

Waldemarstrasse 17, 10179 Berlin  

www.fhochdrei.org

Yero Adugna Eticha: BLACK IN BERLIN @ f3 – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin

Yero Adugna Eticha

BLACK IN BERLIN

f³ – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin

February 23 – March 10, 2024

YERO ADUGNA ETICHA

AYENACHEW SARAH KLAMANDT & JIREGNA TADESE

© Yero Adugna Eticha

YERO ADUGNA ETICHA

VERTEL JACKSON

© Yero Adugna Eticha

YERO ADUGNA ETICHA

ARSENE TSOKENG

© Yero Adugna Eticha

YERO ADUGNA ETICHA

HANNAH MARC 

© Yero Adugna Eticha

For photographer Yero Adugna Eticha, it all began with the protests against the murders of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter movement that grew out of them in 2020. People around the world showed solidarity and demonstrated against racism and discrimination. Yero Adugna Eticha decided to take action himself. On the streets of Berlin, he distributed flyers to Black people asking them to have their picture taken with him. Over the years, he took 500 portraits of Afro-Black Germans and the diaspora in Berlin. During the encounters, he learned everyday and moving details from their lives, which he recorded. Yero Adugna Eticha works transdisciplinary on the levels of image and sound. BLACK IN BERLIN is a unique archive that provides an insight into the multifaceted realities of Black people's lives in a white majority society.

At the center of the portrait work is Yero Adugna Eticha’s examination of the culture and history of colonialism. 

"Who we are: An integral part of this city, people of different professions and backgrounds, different dreams, embodiments of Black identity. I dream of a Berlin in which the facet of every Black face is celebrated." – Yero Adugna Eticha

On the occasion of Black History Month, f³ – freiraum für fotografie presents BLACK IN BERLIN, the first solo exhibition by the Ethiopian-born Yero Adugna Eticha, who lives and works as a photographer in Berlin. At the same time, the photo book BLACK IN BERLIN is published by Distanz Verlag.

Yero Adugna Eticha

BLACK IN BERLIN

Edited by Matthias Kliefoth. 

German/English, 2024, 152 pages,

120 b/w illustrations, hardcover 24 x 29 cm

Distanz Verlag, 1924

YERO ADUGNA ETICHA is a photographer from Oromia/Ethiopia who lives in Berlin and dedicates his work to the stories, perspectives and visions of Afro- and Black Germans. Since graduating from the Ostkreuz School of Photography, he has worked on various photography projects, including "Atmospheres in the Urban Anthropocene" (2019) as well as "The Ethiopian Project" (2020) and "Black in Berlin Project". His work was part of the Boros Foundation group exhibition in the "Studio Berlin" (Berghain). Yero Adugna Eticha teaches at the Ale School of Fine Arts Addis Ababa and has been a member of the BLACK DADS GERMANY initiative since 2021.

The exhibition was curated by Miriam Zlobinski.

Upcoming exhibition at f³ – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin : A DAY OFF. An Exhibition of the F.C. Gundlach Foundation, March 15 – June 2, 2024

f³ – freiraum für fotografie 

Waldemarstraße 17 | 10179 Berlin

fhochdrei.org

A DAY OFF An Exhibition of the F.C. Gundlach Foundation @ f3 – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin

A DAY OFF 

An Exhibition of the F.C. Gundlach Foundation

f³ – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin

March 15 – June 2, 2024

Andreas Herzau

Love Parade, Berlin, Germany 1999

Image: Andreas Herzau © F.C. Gundlach Foundation

Martin Parr

© Martin Parr, from the series Common Sense

[F.C. Gundlach Collection, F.C. Gundlach Foundation + 

House of Photography, Deichtorhallen Hamburg]

Peter Keetman

Diving Tower, Prien am Chiemsee, Germany 1957

Image: Peter Keetman © F.C. Gundlach Foundation

With works by: Diane Arbus, Katharina Bosse, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt, Arthur „Weegee“ Fellig, Bruce Gilden, Nan Goldin, F.C. Gundlach, Esther Haase, Andreas Herzau, David Hockney, Thomas Hoepker, Peter Keetman, Barry Key, Barbara Klemm, Lisette Model, Martin Munkácsi, Martin Parr, Dirk Reinartz, Joel Sternfeld, and others.

Leisure activities are a topic that constantly occupies us all. Just do nothing? Impossible! Our lives have become more hectic and intense, and not just since the coronavirus pandemic. We are confronted with ever more exciting, adventurous and exotic leisure activities everywhere. The pressure to keep up and supposedly have to is enormous. Leisure time has gone from being a time to relax after work to a mass phenomenon. At peak times after work, at weekends and on public holidays, beaches, swimming pools, sports studios, cinemas and parks are bursting at the seams. Everyone is striving for maximum relaxation, self-optimization and the greatest possible distance from everyday life.

Esther Haase

Fish and Chips with the Queen, London 2018 

© Esther Haase

[F.C. Gundlach Collection, F.C. Gundlach Foundation + 

House of Photography, Deichtorhallen Hamburg]

Martin Parr

© Martin Parr, from the series Common Sense

[F.C. Gundlach Collection, F.C. Gundlach Foundation + 

House of Photography, Deichtorhallen Hamburg]

Dirk Reinartz

St. Georg, Hamburg, Germany 1981

Image: Dirk Reinartz © F.C. Gundlach Foundation

A DAY OFF at f³ – freiraum für fotografie visualizes the manifestations of our leisure culture with a wink: people feast, sizzle, smoke, sweat and work out as much as they can. Some scenes are no longer conceivable today. Others are similar: then, as now, people soaked up the sun, watched the latest film in the cinema, danced or played bingo together. Through the lens of some of the world's most renowned photographers, we gain an insight into how our leisure behavior has changed over the past hundred years.

F.C. Gundlach

Self-portrait, Marrakech, Morocco 1983

Image: F.C. Gundlach © F.C. Gundlach Foundation

The F.C. Gundlach Collection

For many decades, F.C. Gundlach, himself one of the most important fashion photographers in the Federal Republic of Germany, collected photography and amassed one of the most important private photography collections in the country. The focus is the image of man in photography. Under this title, around 9,000 photographic works from the collection have been on permanent loan to the House of Photography in the southern Deichtorhalle in Hamburg since 2005. In addition, many other types and genres of photography were and are part of the F.C. Gundlach Collection, some of which can be seen as collection themes in their own right. Even after the collector's death, the F.C. Gundlach Foundation continues to add large collections of individual photographers and archives, which are preserved and processed.

f³ – freiraum für fotografie 

Waldemarstrasse 17 - 10179 Berlin

www.fhochdrei.org

Ruth Orkin, Women Exhibition @ f3 – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin + Gallery of Fine Arts, Ostrava

Ruth Orkin, Women 

f3 – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin 

December 8, 2023 – February 18, 2024

Gallery of Fine Arts, Ostrava 

March 5 – May 12, 2024

Following the successful show Ruth Orkin – A Photo Spirit in 2021, f³ – freiraum für fotografie now presents newly discovered and previously unpublished photographs by American photographer Ruth Orkin.

Ruth Orkin was one of the professional women photographers of the 1940s and 1950s. Although she published in numerous newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times, Life, and Look, and her photographs were part of the legendary exhibition The Family of Man at MoMA, her work, which rivals that of the great photographers of her time, is still little known internationally. One of her most important photographs is American Girl in Italy from 1951, which became a symbol of the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s. The street scene shows a young woman striding through a line of whistling men.

Tracing the photographer's footsteps, Nadine Barth, curator and publicist @barthouseprojects, and Katharina Mouratidi, Artistic Director f³ – freiraum für fotografie, came across a largely unpublished, multi-layered and unique body of work that reveals a little-known side of Ruth Orkin: at of a sensitive, interested, witty, and funny chronicler of American women of the 1940s and 1950s.

With biting humor, the photographer devised reportages such as »Who Works Harder?«, which compares the life of a housewife and mother with that of a career woman, documented women in beauty salons, at cocktail parties, at dog shows and on the film set in Hollywood. In the footage we encounter Lauren Bacall, Jane Russell, Joan Taylor, and Doris Day, but also waitresses, stewardesses, soldiers, and best friends.

What Ruth Orkin’s subtle but radically subversive shots capture are images of women on the move who are beginning to shed the conventions imposed on them and go their own way: self-confident, stylish, smart and ahead of their time.

RUTH ORKIN (1921–1985) began taking photographs at the age of ten. In 1939 she studied photojournalism at Los Angeles City College, the same year she produced her first major photographic work. At the age of 17, she crossed the United States by bicycle and with a camera on her way to the World's Fair, from Los Angeles to New York. As a freelance photographer, she worked for Life, Look and Ladies Home Journal, among other magazines. On the occasion of her 100th birthday in 2021, her work was rediscovered and shown for the first time in a solo exhibition in Germany at f³ – freiraum für fotografie.

The exhibition was curated by Nadine Barth and Katharina Mouratidi

Accompanying the exhibition is the photo book Ruth Orkin – Women published by Hatje Cantz

Ruth Orkin, Women

Edited by: Nadine Barth, Katharina Mouratidi

Published by Hatje Cantz, 2023

Hardcover, 265mm x 265mm, 144 Pages, 111 Ills.

ISBN: 978-3-7757-5685-3

f³ – freiraum für fotografie

Waldemarstraße 17 - 10179 Berlin

www.fhochdrei.org

Ruth Orkin: A Photo Spirit @ f³ – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin

Ruth Orkin: A Photo Spirit 

f³ – freiraum für fotografie, Berlin 

4 September — 21 November 2021

With its first solo exhibition in Germany, f3 – freiraum für fotografie honors the American photographer Ruth Orkin, a chronicler of the 1940s and 1950s.

Everyday scenes, cityscapes, portraits. Ruth Orkin’s photographs tell stories. Of the up-and-coming America of the post-war period, of the attitude to life of a society on the upswing and of women conquering new roles beyond that of housewife and mother. Her humorous yet serious view of the world is evident in the details of the images, in her sense of movement, timing and composition.

Ruth Orkin is one of the few professional women photographers of the 1940s and 1950s. Although she published in numerous newspapers and magazines such as the New York Times, Life or Look and her photographs were part of the legendary MOMA exhibition The Family of Man, she is still little known internationally. In contrast to many of her male colleagues, whose works are among the icons of street photography.

Ruth Orkin began taking photographs at the age of ten. In 1939, she produced her first major photographic work. At the age of 17, she crossed the USA by bicycle and with the camera, once from L. A. to New York for the World’s Fair. She moved there in 1943. 

With the publication of a photograph in Star magazine, her career as a freelance photographer began in 1945. Ruth Orkin was commissioned by Life to travel to Israel in 1951. She documented the young country and its (newly arrived) inhabitants as well as life in the kibbutz. This trip was one of her most important personal experiences.

One of her most famous images is the photograph American Girl in Italy. For the photograph, she portrayed her travel acquaintance Ninalee Craig (Jinx Allen) surrounded by men in Florence in 1951. Jinx became her friend and muse, inspiring her to create an entire series that shows, with an ironic eye, what it was like to travel alone as a woman in the 1950s. 

Throughout her life and work, Ruth Orkin has experienced, reflected and subverted society’s expectations. Her photographs are modern, free and perceptive commentaries on those times. Ruth Orkin would have turned 100 on September 3, 2021.

The exhibition has been curated by Katharina Mouratidi, Artistic Director f3 – freiraum für fotografie, and Nadine Barth, barthouse Berlin.

f³ – freiraum für fotografie

Waldemarstraße 17 - 10179 Berlin

www.fhochdrei.org