Currency

Engaging the theme of Currency from various perspectives, the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg opens on May 20, 2022 with twelve exhibitions presenting over 75 artists. From appraised colonial-era photo albums to poetic reveries, social documentary, and conceptual approaches to photography, the exhibitions explore the myriad ways in which photographs are produced, circulated, and interpreted.

At the Hall for Contemporary Art—Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Currency: Photography Beyond Capture explores conceptual approaches to photography in the “retinal age” of visual immediacy and media saturation. Works by 29 international artists will be interwoven as experimental modes of portrayal, documentary, and multisensory evocation, providing a series of entry points for reimagining how knowledge is sought and constructed through the medium. With works by artists including Akinbode Akinbiyi, Ziad Antar, Alfredo Jaar, Clifford Prince King, Marilyn Nance, Otobong Nkanga, Rana El-Nemr, Jo Ractliffe, Cecilia Reynoso, and Raed Yassin.

The transfer and circulation of meaning in photography also informs the subject of Give and Take. Images upon Images at the Hamburger Kunsthalle. The exhibition explores how images move across geographical, cultural, and social boundaries and lose original intention in the process, their meanings no longer controlled. With works by artists including Viktoria Binschtok, Sara Cwynar, Louise Lawler, Max Pinckers, Walid Raad, Volker Renner, Martha Rosler, and Taryn Simon.

Two exhibitions are devoted to the photographer Herbert List. The Magic Eye at the Bucerius Kunst Forum presents the first international survey exhibition of his work, while the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg shows List’s never-before-seen photo book project from the 1930s and 1940s, Präuschers Panoptikum. A Photo Book by Herbert List, as well as further photographs representing his visual language that challenges gender stereotypes.

The Kunstverein in Hamburg will host a solo exhibition of the artist and photographer LaToya Ruby Frazier, namely, Flint is Family, Act III, the last part of her photo series in which Frazier documented the ongoing water crisis in Flint, Michigan. Extending critical work around resources, Kunsthaus Hamburg presents Seeing the Wood for the Trees by the Italian design duo Formafantasma—a series of visual essays from their extensive project Cambio that investigates the development and regulation of the global timber industry.

Archive of Experiences at the Museum am Rothenbaum—World Cultures and Arts re-examines its photographic collection from the perspective of “currency” in global trade, inviting artist Kelvin Haizel to engage with a photo album from 1868 about the city of Singapore bequeathed by a Hamburg merchant family. The Stiftung Historische Museen Hamburg presents three exhibitions and three historical inroads: Power. Means. Money. at the Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte approaches “currency” literally through the museum’s significant inventory of coins. Reflecting particular aspects of colonial history, the coins will be set in motion through an intervention by dancer Eva Lomby and photographer Chris Schwagga. Strike! at the Museum der Arbeit presents a photographic history of pivotal labour struggles from the 1960s to the present moment. Ciphers of a City: Photographs by Hans Meyer-Veden at the Jenisch Haus presents the photographer’s wandering vision of city alongside three contemporary artistic interventions into Meyer-Veden’s monochrome aesthetic.

Two further exhibitions are hosted by the Deichtorhallen Hamburg. The Falckenberg Collection presents a retrospective of the Hamburg fashion and advertising photographer Charlotte March. In the two-part exhibition Behind the Scenes at the temporary House of Photography PHOXXI, Christoph Irrgang’s photographs document the transition the F.C. Grundlach Collection is undergoing, while Photonews editors Anna Gripp and Denis Brudna explore Paris Photo as the “stock exchange” of photography.

View further information about the Triennial's exhibition parcours.
View list of participating artists.

Initiated by F. C. Gundlach, the Triennial of Photography Hamburg has taken place every three years since 1999 federating Hamburg’s major museums, art spaces, cultural institutions, galleries, and foundations. Since 2014, the Triennial’s organization has been led by the Deichtorhallen Hamburg GmbH. The artistic director of the 8th Triennial of Photography Hamburg 2022 is Koyo Kouoh, who appointed an international curatorial team consisting of Rasha Salti, Gabriella Beckhurst Feijoo and Oluremi C. Onabanjo. The 8th edition is funded by the Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, Behörde für Kultur und Medien, with further support from BMW Niederlassung Hamburg, Otto Group, White Wall, and Zeit-Stiftung (Ebelin and Gerd Bucerius).