Exposition / Exhibition Cristal réel, after Alfred Ehrhardt 
Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung, Berlin

Commissaire / Curator : Sonia Voss

Inauguration Sa. 26.06.2020, 11 am  - 6 pm

Exposition du 26.06 au 06.09.2020

du mardi au dimanche, de 11 à 18h

Exhibition from  26.06 - 06.09.2020

from Tuesday to Saturday, from 11 am to 6 pm 

Isabelle Le Minh’s first solo exhibition in Germany stems from an invitation extended by the Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation to develop another instalment of her long-term project ‟After Photography,” in which she reinterprets the œuvres of seminal figures of photography, drawing upon the work of Alfred Ehrhardt.

Le Minh took an especial interest in Ehrhardt’s photographs of crystals and minerals from 1938-39. The relationship between volume and light as well as the effects of transparency and diffraction with which Ehrhardt is playing masterfully in these photographs produce a remarkable synthesis of his musical education, his studies at the Bauhaus, and his readings in German Naturphilosophie.

In the series Kristallklar, Le Minh juxtaposes Ehrhardt’s negatives – showing their original flaws as well as Ehrhardt’s retouching process – with landscapes of the crystals’ regions of origin found in the internet. She reveals the photograph as an elaborated image, the result of a series of intentional operations, and plays with the ambivalent nature of photography, which is at once documentation and subjective construction.

Cristallogrammesis a series of photograms resulting from small, abstract constructions assembled out of photo archiving materials and placed on light-sensitive paper. The products of this process bear a striking resemblance to Ehrhardt’s crystals and remind us that photographs also act as traps.

Two works complete the exhibition:Épitrope, a re-visioning of Ehrhardt’s Épidote, and Silber, a tautological work that superposes the image of a silver nugget onto a background of silver-plated paper.

Le Minh also selected several of Ehrhardt’s crystals and minerals to be exhibited as modern prints alongside her work. Together with a showcase of vintage prints, presented with their negatives on glass and printing specifications, they shed light on the foundation’s dual mission: the conservation of Ehrhardt’s archive and the transmission of his oeuvre for re-visioning by researchers and artists.

Alfred Erhard Stiftung Berlin
Auguststr. 75
10117 Berlin
GERMANY