Catalog / The future of the past

The volume is dedicated to the discoverers of photography and reflects the fascination that continues to this day for a medium that has decisively changed the world within a short space of time. For the viewer of the 21st century, the approximately 130 photographs provide a previously unfamiliar perspective of 19th-century photographic art. The focus of the show is not on the historical development of photography, but on the question of the extent to which 20th-century image strategies can already be seen in 19th-century images. The pictures by William Henry Fox Talbot, Eugène Cuvelier, Eugène Atget and others exhibit a rigor and objectivity that runs counter to the mainstream of the 19th century. The photographers featured in the collection unwittingly anticipated modernism in this way.

The volume presents the private photo collection of the Stuttgart collector Rolf Mayer.

Edited by Markus Müller for the Graphic Museum Pablo Picasso Münster
With text contributions by Freddy Langer, Markus Müller and Henning Weidemann
232 pages, 134 illustrations, German, English, French