"I am a Berliner" - with these words, John F. Kennedy made history. No record of the young charismatic president is more celebrated, cheered harder, been cited more often than this. In June 1963, Kennedy came to the Federal Republic of Germany. Cologne, Wiesbaden, Frankfurt and Berlin were on the agenda of a journey that would be a triumphal trip. Since the Berlin Wall was built in 1961 the Berlin people had been waiting for a sign of solidarity. Well there it was: In the form of the most powerful man in the world, whose presence in the "front-line city," not less than two million people took to the streets cheering, waving, flag waving. Kennedy's visit marked the high point of American enthusiasm in West Germany. This visit was a political, but also a media event and was accompanied by the 28-year-old Ulrich Mack for the German magazine Quick. Mack's black and white reportage are known for its artisanal excellence, a sense of decisive moments for grand gestures, but also a sensitive look at the goings-on the edge, the more so as the well-staged performances of politicians - Kennedy, Adenauer, Brandt - the emotional side of the visit reflects. Not a photographer, that's for sure, has the state visit as completely so sensitive, documented as committed as Ulrich Mack. Five decades outsourced its images and negatives largely unnoticed in the archives, now, Burkhard Arnold, owner of the internationally reputated in focus gallery in Cologne, selected in collaboration with Ulrich Mack photographs from this series to an exhibition - equally an important piece of time, photography and media history.
The exhibition is complemented by a careful selection of photographs of two other series. For one of Mack's 1959 arising series "Ruhrgebiet" with its collieries and blast furnaces, its workers' settlements, railroad tracks and loading ports - a defunct world of which only traces survived - and the other resulting from the 2001 series "Distance" with color pictures of great beauty (dye-transfer) about the vast salt marshes of Ipswich in the northeastern United States, in Massachusetts.
Ulrich Mack, born in 1934, was a photojournalist for Quick and Stern magazine before in 1975 he moved as a professor of visual communication at the FH Dortmund into teaching. Mack has published several books (including a comparative study "Pellworm / Harkers Iceland") and repeatedly received awards and honors for his life's work.
Prices: signed and dated silver gelatin prints in the size 30 x 40 cm from € 1200;
signed, dated, limited to 10 copies dye transfer prints in the size 50 x 60 cm from 3600 €.
Opening in the presence of the photographer Ulrich Mack on Saturday, March 9th 2013
7.00 pm – 9.30 pm. Exhibition until May 8th 2013.
Opening times:
up to March 28th 2013 - Tuesday to Saturday from 4.00 - 8.00 pm,
until May 8th only by appointment.
New book available middle of March 2013:
Ulrich Mack: Kennedy in Germany
Cologne / Bonn / Wiesbaden / Frankfurt / Berlin 1963
Photographs by Ulrich Mack, edited by Hans-Michael Koetzle
About 128 pages, about 100 illustrations, 25.0 x 26.5 cm, hardcover
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