Dr. Matthias Harder Dr. Matthias Harder

The Photography Expert Who Does Not Get Tired to Push Its Boundaries.

Dr. Matthias Harder, director and curator of the Helmut Newton Foundation, is aware of the huge archive of the German-Australian photographer higher than nearly anybody. He has now spent greater than 20 years working on the museum, established in 2004. The quite a few exhibitions he has organised and curated not solely showcase its visible heritage but additionally carry it into dialogue with up to date practices and concepts. In doing so, Harder repeatedly demonstrates how interpretation, which means, and context might be re-examined – with out rendering the images out of date, however reasonably permitting us to broaden the dialog.

Harder’s profession as a curator started early on, rooted in his deep engagement with images. A decisive second in his profession got here by means of a private encounter with Helmut Newton. Following an preliminary assembly on the event of Newton’s eightieth birthday and an in-depth dialog with the photographer in December 2003, Harder joined the newly established Helmut Newton Foundation. Today, he serves as each curator and director of the muse, the place he’s accountable for its exhibition programme, growing his curatorial ideas in parallel with spatial planning whereas frequently realising new codecs.

The exhibition Rooms/Stages pushes this ongoing dialogue in a compelling route. Newton’s iconic imagery, the attractive folks, flawless our bodies, and nearly too-perfect scenes, is juxtaposed with works which can be largely devoid of human presence but wealthy in spatial connotations, lengthy central to Newton’s oeuvre. When Harder speaks concerning the psychology of house, each in situ and throughout the works, he does so with palpable enthusiasm: “The exhibition moves from physical space through pictorial space to the stage – and in the end, we ourselves are standing on that stage. Helmut Newton, too, never simply photo- graphed spaces, but always conceived of them as stages – whether a hotel room, a street, or an interior.”

Helmut Newton, whose work is frequently recontextualised by means of evolving shows at his Berlin basis, reworked numerous places into levels, because the second a part of the group exhibition demonstrates. “One could almost say: where Helmut Newton left off, many contemporary approaches pick up today – at least in their engagement with space and staging.”

Rooms/Stages is on till November 2026 on the Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin.