26/02/2018 Peter Keetman - Museum Folkwang

Peter Keetman
World through a Creative
Camera. e Life’s Work of a
Photographer
June 3 – July 31, 2016
To mark the 100th anniversary of Peter Keetman’s birth, Museum
Folkwang and Sti ung F.C. Gundlach are presenting the rst
comprehensive retrospective of the eminent photographer’s work.
Around 360 exhibits present Keetman not only as a young rebel
involved with the in uential group fotoform, but also as one of the
most innovative and poetic photographers of the post-war era,
whose extensive oeuvre combined nature and motion studies,
experiments, industrial and applied photography.

Peter Keetman (1916–2005) was a central gure in German post-

war modern photography, and the exhibition World through a
Creative Camera – e Life’s Work of a Photographer is the largest
survey of his work to date. It is also the rst to examine how
Keetman’s practice managed to link two prevailing trends of this
era: on the one hand, a Modernist commitment to form, design,
experimentation and abstraction; on the other, a humanist
worldview and a turning toward the fundamental elements of
post-war reconstruction, urban dwelling and nature.

Characteristic of Keetman’s work is his continuous and

imaginative exploration of the camera’s potential to create rather
than just capture images. e retrospective not only traces the
career of a great photographer, but also the protean career of the
medium of photography itself, as it evolved between free art and
commercial work.

As suggested by the exhibition’s title World through a Creative

Camera, his works unite the period’s two main aesthetic currents:
On one hand there is the modernist intention to form,
experiment, and abstract – on the other hand there is the wish for
a humanist relationship to the world as well as a turning towards
reconstruction, the city, and nature, up to its most fundamental
elements. Organized by the Museum Folkwang and the F.C.
Gundlach Foundation, this major retrospective demonstrates how
these two tendencies coexist and merge in Keetman’s work.

Keetman’s photography and biography are linked with one

another, as is German history. Unprecedented in its range, this
exhibition shows his early works following the New Objectivity
style, pictures from Munich during the Nazi era, and from the
war against the Soviet Union, which le Keetman disabled.

During the late 1940s Keetman overcame the old-fashioned

aesthetic of his apprenticeship years in Munich and with
Stuttgart-based Adolf Lazi. He became part of fotoform, a group
of young rebels inspired by the experiments of the pre-war avant-
garde. Based on formal reduction, light’s creative powers, and
experiencing the world individually and subjectively, the group
aimed to develop a new photographic language. Along with Otto
Steinert and other fotoform members Keetman stood for
photography’s move into a new era.

In great detail, the exhibition retraces German photography’s

exciting evolution in the late 1940s and 1950s. In doing so,

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26/02/2018 Peter Keetman - Museum Folkwang

Keetman’s escaping of any formalism is made visible, as he was

working not in one but photography’s many elds: he portrays
Munich’s reconstruction, visualizes hidden structures in
landscapes and natural phenomena, discovers the "great picture"
in the smallest details – and nally translates the dynamic of the Your visit / What's on / About us Social Media Language
Germany’s era of "economic miracle" into abstract images.

Two separate chapters are dedicated to his famous 1953 series at

the Wolfsburger Volkswagen factory and his Oscillations –
Keetman’s contribution to the history of experimental
photography. Another subject of the exhibition is the eventful
interlocking of Keetman’s free and commissioned photography,
revealing the many facets of this crucial gure of post-war
photography.

is retrospective originates in a close collaboration with the F.C.

Gundlach Foundation, which owns a major part of the estate.
Other parts of the estate are kept in the Collection of Photographs
at the Museum Folkwang. A er its rst stop in Essen, the
exhibition will continue on to the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg and
the Kunstfoyer in the Versicherungskammer Kultursti ung,
Munich.

In association with the Sti ung F.C. Gundlach.

Peter Keetman
Self-Portrait With Camera, 1957
Gelatin silver print
© Sti ung F.C. Gundlach

e exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue

F.C. Gundlach (pub.): "Gestaltet Welt", 300p.,
Steidl Verlag, Göttingen 2016
ISBN 978-3-95829-204-8, Price 48 EURO

Available at Museum Folkwang.

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26/02/2018 Peter Keetman - Museum Folkwang

Exhibition catalogue

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