Arwed Messmer Explained

Arwed Messmer (born 1964)[1] is a German photographer and artist, based in Berlin.[2] His work primarily uses recontextualised vernacular photographs of recent historical events, found in German state archives, in order to pose questions about photography.[3] He mainly produces books of this work, often with Annett Gröschner on the time of a divided Germany, but also exhibits it.[3]

Messmer won the Otto Steinert Prize from the German Society for Photography in 1996, was co-winner (with Gröschner) of a DAM Architectural Book Award in 2011 and 2012, and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize in 2018.

Life and work

Messmer was born in 1964 in Schopfheim in the district of Lörrach, Germany.[2] He moved to Berlin in 1991.[3]

His work over the course of 25 years has dealt with issues surrounding German post-war history.[4] For the latter 10 years he has worked primarily with utilitarian images produced by the state, that he has found in a number of archives.[4]

In 1994 and 1995 Messmer made a series called "Potsdamer Platz, Anno Zero" (Potsdamer Platz, Year Zero).[3] Potsdamer Platz was an important public square and traffic intersection in the centre of Berlin that was totally destroyed during World War II and then left desolate during the Cold War era when the Berlin Wall bisected its former location. Messmer's series is concerned with this period, before it became the site of major redevelopment projects.[3]

Messmer's 2014 book Reenactments MfS uses photographs of re-enactments of escape attempts across the Berlin Wall, and crime-scene exhibits, sourced from the Stasi Records Agency.[3] The images were made in the course of crime investigations by the Ministry for State Security (MfS), commonly known as the Stasi, the official state security service of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany).[3] Re-enactments were "often restaged with participation by the actual escapee after they were caught".[3] Messmer provides new contexts for the photographs and removes their captions.[3] The book also includes Messmer's "Revisited Places" series of photographs that he made in 2014.[3]

Messmer's 2016 book Zelle/Cell is about the West German far-left militant organisation the Red Army Faction (RAF), also known as the Baader-Meinhof Group.[5] It contains lesser-known photographs[4] of the group's history between 1968 (with the 2 June Movement) and 1977. The work was shown in an exhibition titled RAF: No Evidence / Kein Beweis in June 2018 at Museum Folkwang in Essen, Germany. The critic Gerry Badger has written that "He is not attempting to reconstruct the history but play creatively, as it were, with this fascinating, but enigmatic material.  . . . Messmer is questioning photography's role, both as witness, and ultimately, as art."[5] Messmer says "My work also has an ethical dimension: What images can be shown? How can they be shown? And why should we look at them?".[4]

Publications

Publications by Messmer

Publications with contributions by Messmer

Awards

Notes and References

  1. Web site: 2019-02-18. Deutsche Börse 2019 Nominee: Arwed Messmer. 25 January 2019. The Photographers' Gallery.
  2. Web site: 2019-02-18. RAF-No Evidence / Kein Beweis. 19 October 2017. C/O Berlin.
  3. Jeffrey. Ladd. 2019-02-18. Go Inside East Germany's Stasi Archives. Time.
  4. Web site: Ryan. White. Matthew. Whitehouse. 2019-02-18. 4 artists pushing forward the possibilities of photography. 21 November 2018. i-D.
  5. Web site: Gerry. Badger. Gerry Badger. 2019-02-20. Arwed Messmer. www.1000wordsmag.com. 23 April 2017.
  6. Web site: 2019-02-20. DAM Deutsches Architekturmuseum. German Architecture Museum.
  7. Web site: 2019-02-20. DAM Deutsches Architekturmuseum. German Architecture Museum. https://web.archive.org/web/20180325153155/http://www.dam-online.de/portal/de/Architekturpreise/DAMARCHITECTURALBOOKAWARD2012/1963/0/67655/mod1351-details1/1587.aspx. 2018-03-25. dead.
  8. Web site: Announcing the Winners of the 2016 PhotoBook Awards. 18 February 2019 . . 11 November 2016 .
  9. News: Sean. O'Hagan. Sean O'Hagan (journalist). 2019-02-08. Guns and poses: Deutsche Börse photography prize shortlist revealed. The Guardian. 5 November 2018. 0261-3077. www.theguardian.com.
  10. Web site: 2019-02-08. Shortlist announced for the 2019 Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize. 5 November 2018. British Journal of Photography.

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