photo: Annette Hauschild/OSTKREUZ
Biography
Anne Schönharting, born in Meißen in 1973, studied photography at the Lette-Verein Berlin and has been a member of the Ostkreuz agency since 1999. In her long-term artistic projects, she devotes herself to a wide variety of themes and moves between the genres of portraiture, artistic documentary photography, fashion and social studies. She works on commission for renowned clients and her pictures have been published in national and international magazines and exhibited in institutions. She has held a teaching position at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee and guest professorships for photography at the Bauhaus University in Weimar and the Muthesius Kunsthochschule in Kiel.
In 2020, Anne Schönharting published her award-winning book “The Legacy” with Hartmann Books: an examination of her family’s colonial past, for which she was awarded gold at the German Photo Book Prize 2020/21, among others. Most recently, her book “Habitat” was published in 2022, also by Hartmann Books, and won bronze at the German Photo Book Award 2023/24. Anne Schönharting lives in Berlin.
www.anneschoenharting.com
Exhibitions / projects (selection)
2023 “Habitat / Berlin-Charlottenburg, Goethe Institute Bordeaux
2022 “Habitat”, Haus am Kleistpark-Berlin
2020 “Das Erbe”, installation in “Continent-in search of Europe”, OSTKREUZ, AdK in Berlin
2021 “Dressed 7 women – 200 years of fashion”, photographic still lifes for the catalogue of MK&G Hamburg
2019 “Adler”, part of a photo film production in cooperation between Ostkreuz and Arte
2017/18 Artistic collaboration with the Italian fashion house Brioni, 2 exhibitions in Paris
2012 “Road Closed” in “Über Grenzen”, OSTKREUZ, House of World Cultures/Berlin
2010 “Auroville” in “The City. On Becoming and Passing Away”, OSTKREUZ, C/O Berlin
1999 “Diera – a German village” in “Östlich von Eden”, OSTKREUZ, Postfuhramt in Berlin
“… I would never choose a subject for what it means to me or what I think about it. You’ve just got to choose a subject – and what you feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold if you just plain choose a subject and do it enough.” (Diane Arbus)
We look at the outside world through the “eye” of a camera. We try to capture or stage reality, the event, the person, the object, the landscape, or a feeling in snapshots. Is this a reflection of the world or does it also tell us about ourselves and our point of view?
In this seminar, photography is understood as an entry ticket to photographically process and penetrate a chosen theme. By questioning traditional form of narration we will challenge ourselves to eliminate the separation between author and depicted, reality and the imaginary.
If the specific and thorough investigations in the forms of images also reveal something universally valid, that would be a wonderful result.
A central element of this one-year seminar is to awaken enthusiasm for a topic and to keep your “thinking in images” alive. This happens through the experience of actively working on a topic over the long term. Inspiration from the most diverse directions of photography, the visual arts, but also from literature, philosophy or sociology will play a role here.
Circling around an idea, penetrating, working through and changing perspectives will be practised in image discussions as well as in individual and group discussions. To clarify one’s own project idea, we will start by working with a special form of discussion based on the dialogue principle and the intelligence of the group.
The aim for the participants is to develop a new series or to continue and complete a work that has already been started. The finished or started project may be presented and exhibited at the end of the seminar.
Dates (10am – 6pm)
2.3.
6.4.
4.5.
1.6.
29.6.
5 more dates tba (winter semester)
