PHOTOGRAPHY COLLECTION

The Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg began to build up its collection of photography as a medium in its own right as early as 1900.
For reasons of conservation, the items in the collection are only put on display for a limited time in specially compiled exhibitions.

The Photography Collection has meanwhile grown to c. 100,000 works ranging from photo journalism and object photography to freely composed art photography, reflecting the history of the medium from its first beginnings up to the present day - from the Daguerreotype to digitalisation. The newly established emphasis of the collection, tracing the history and current trends of fashion photography, initiated by the Stiftung ModeWelten of F. C. Gundlach, has been systematically followed since its inception in 1991. This has been done, among other activities, through purchasing important works by the American photographer Irving Penn.

Studio exhibitions in the Forum Fotografie present contemporary photographers of both sexes, whose creative enthusiasm for experimental work breaks the mould of the conventional view of a medium originally conceived for the reproduction of reality.