The bouquet of flowers as an artistic installation that precedes photography is the focus of this group exhibition.

As a classic still life subject, the bouquet of flowers has not lost its appeal to the present day. The arranged photographs of bouquets of flowers in the mid-19th century are to be understood as precursors of staged photography.

With various photographic positions, the exhibition ranges from historical photography, for example by Heinrich Kühn, to computer-based photography by Tim Berresheim. This pictorial subject is also used to demonstrate the changes in the technical and content-related possibilities of photography.

Contemporary 'bouquet photography' goes far beyond nature or documentary photography. Photographic artists have explored and scrutinized the sculptural, painterly, and conceptual possibilities of this still life to varying degrees.

Since the beginning of the 17th century, the bouquet of flowers has been present in painting as a still life in all its arranged splendour, often symbolizing the transience of all existence. Photography has the opportunity to accompany the process of transience, and it is often the flowers that have already withered that create a special charm in the perception of reality. Nothing shows reality more strikingly than transience. The curator of the exhibition is the artist Hartmut Neumann

Press release courtesy Beck & Eggeling International Fine Art.