Dirk Reinartz. Fotografieren, was ist

In the organizer's words:

From May 16, 2024, the LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn will be showing the first major retrospective of the important photojournalist and author Dirk Reinartz (1947-2004). Twenty years after his untimely death, the focus will be on his extensive oeuvre, which distinguishes him as an outstanding photographer of the late Federal Republic and reunified Germany.

Whether in his early foreign reportages, for example for Stern magazine in Japan, or in his free image series from the German provinces, Reinartz succeeded in capturing socio-political developments, cultural upheavals and concrete life situations of people in subtle photographic narratives using a precise and pointed visual language.

The central theme in Reinartzʼ work is his preoccupation with Germany and the Germans. Throughout his life, he searched for motifs in which a German identity could be recognized, with all its contradictions and historical anchoring: from small-town life in the example of Buxtehude to the great social reorientation after 1989. In publications such as "Kein schöner Land" (1989) or "Bismarck. Vom Verrat der Denkmäler" (1991), Reinartz shed light on the German culture of remembrance and the persistence of the past in the present. In "totenstill" (1994), an examination of the architectural remains of National Socialist concentration camps, he questioned the representability of horror.

Reinartzʼs work has appeared in many major magazines such as Der Spiegel, in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and ZEIT magazines and in the art magazine art. The exhibition presents Dirk Reinartzʼs work along the lines of the areas of tension that have preoccupied him throughout his life, such as power and powerlessness, proximity and distance, past and present.

Price information:

Admission 11 €, reduced 7 €