The Best of Frank Kunert
Published by Hatje Cantz
June 2025
Text: Ariadne von Schirach
Image courtesy Hatje Cantz
Souterrain, 2015
Image courtesy Hatje Cantz
Attic Flat, 2007
Image courtesy Hatje Cantz
Field Office, 2010
Image courtesy Hatje Cantz
As the title suggests, this book presents the best photographs of Frank Kunert. The choice must have been difficult! These photographs are taken from three books previously published by Hatje Cantz.
The German photographer FRANK KUNERT (b. 1963) has made a name for himself in the contemporary art scene thanks to a universe that is both quirky and meticulously crafted. Far from documentary realism or traditional portraiture, Frank Kunert creates miniature surreal models, which he photographs with painstaking precision. Each image is the result of a long manual process, blending dark humor, irony, and absurd poetry.
Frank Kunert
Event Restaurant, 2005
Image courtesy Hatje Cantz
Frank Kunert
Salvation, 2009
Image courtesy Hatje Cantz
...When a church becomes a parking lot...
Frank Kunert
Drive-In, 2012
Image courtesy Hatje Cantz
Golden Goal, 2003
Image courtesy Hatje Cantz
Frank Kunert
A Place in the Sun, 2014
Image courtesy Hatje Cantz
The scenes he stages are at once familiar and unsettling. A hotel room with a ski slope as an emergency exit, a balcony facing a brick wall, or a dinner table perched high above a living room on stilts—Kunert’s world defies all logic. He cultivates a distinctly German sense of nonsense, where the banality of everyday life collides with architectural absurdities or surreal situations. This offbeat perspective subtly questions social norms, urban anxieties, and the absurdity of certain conventions.
Auf hohem Niveau, 2008
Image courtesy Hatje Cantz
The previous photograph, both restrained in form and disconcerting in content, encapsulates Kunert’s unique aesthetic, composed of visual paradoxes, understated irony, and a subtle poetics of the absurd. By diverting a commonplace architectural element such as a staircase from its intended purpose, he invites reflection on the relationship between cultural institutions and their audiences. The museum—ostensibly a space of openness and cultural exchange—appears here as an inaccessible fortress, deftly alluding to common critiques of the contemporary art world: elitism, insularity, opacity, and a certain detachment from everyday life.
Live Broadcast, 2012
Image courtesy Hatje Cantz
In Live Broadcast the television is physically connected to the toilet bowl, as if drawing its content directly from it. True to Kunert’s style, this photograph combines precise craftsmanship with a sharp sense of irony. It playfully critiques the quality—or perhaps the emptiness and vulgarity—of modern media consumption. By creating a literal pipeline between waste and entertainment, Frank Kunert blurs the line between functionality and absurdity, challenging viewers to reflect on the content they absorb daily.
Menu à deux, 2009
Image courtesy Hatje Cantz
"In Frank Kunert’s Menu à Deux, meanwhile, the V-shaped dining table and perfectly symmetrical place settings imply a (nonexistent) mirror—or perhaps a difficult relationship." notes Karen Rosenberg in The New York Times (June 16, 2011).
Frank Kunert doesn’t just aim to amuse; he unsettles, inviting us to pause and see the world through a different lens. His photographs, though seemingly lighthearted, often reveal a quiet melancholy, or a veiled critique of modern society.
In short, Frank Kunert is a sculptor of absurdity and a photographer of the impossible, whose images, beneath their wry humor, capture the paradoxes of a very real world.
I recommend this book to you.
HATJE CANTZ
