23 January 2012

So, last week I had my ‘real’ first museum visit of 2012, and by real I mean the first visit where I actually went to see an exhibition, rather than just lounge around having afternoon tea.

My destination was the Deutsches Historische Museum, here in Berlin, which is currently showing ‘Für Immer Jung’ (Eng: Forever Young), commemorating the 50th anniversary of the German Youth Photo Prize, which has been awarded since 1961. The archive of the Photo Prize, which launched the career of many well-known photographers, forms part of the museum’s collections, and they took the anniversary as an occasion to exhibit an extensive retrospective, as well as publishing a souvenir album.

The exhibition was set up thematically, with two of the largest sections devoted to ‘Portrait and Self Portrait’ and ‘Family Pictures’, as these formed a large portion of photographs submitted to the contest from the outset, covering everything from personal environment, every day family scenes, and seasonal festivities, to documenting existential topics such as old age, illness or death. Other themes covered Friends and Community’, ‘Intimacy and Love’, body image, travel, sports, social and political protest, with one section dedicated specifically to the erection and fall of the Berlin Wall. A selection of photographs from the German Democratic Republic, which also held a photography competition from 1970 to 1989 for “comparisons of the achievements of the children and youth photo groups of the GDR”, were also included in the exhibition, although they are actually part of a different collection. 

If you love photography, then this is an exhibition for you - there is a LOT to see. Perhaps almost too much (over 600 photographs on 1000 square metres), in some instances I felt it could have benefitted from being more selective, but perhaps I am just overwhelmed too easily these days. You definitely got your money’s worth. What I found really interesting, was seeing how the photography developed over the 50 years that the exhibition covered, both in the way the themes had developed over the years, and also in the way themes had stayed almost the same but reflected the technical advances of photography. For example, early entries for love seemed quite chaste, expressed through looks and body language, or perhaps a couple embracing, whilst later entries become much more sexually extrovert, even including full nudity. On the other hand, you have scenes that seem unchanged over 50 years, such as a mother and baby, or a Christmas celebration, but have progressed from old black and white or vintage coloured point and shoots to modern high tech DSLRs. There are also two sections towards the end, which look at experimenting by means of photography, and artificially altered motifs, e.g. through computer aided image processing. 

The exhibition concluded with current works from former prize winners, and it was interesting to compare these with their original entries, which were displayed alongside. The majority of them were photographs which had stood out for me whilst going through the exhibition! 

The exhibition is still on view at the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin until 5th February, after which it will travel to Bonn for a while.