Photography

The "Photography" collection comprises around 290,000 photographic works from the early beginnings of the history of photography in Frankfurt to the present day. Almost all photographic processes and techniques are represented, from the daguerreotype to black-and-white and color prints to digital printing, from glass negatives to digital photo files.

The collection includes individual works, series and photo albums by professional photographers and photo studios, but also by amateur and amateur photographers. High-quality artist prints stand alongside documentary photographs and private photos. The development of the collection not only shows the stages in the history of photography, but also the development of media history up to the 21st century. Since the museum was founded in 1878, photographs have been integrated into the Graphic Arts Collection on an equal footing with drawings and prints and serve to document the history and image of the city. The new medium, created in 1839, proved to be an excellent means of capturing the accelerating processes of change in the city's topography and historical events since the mid-19th century.

Portrait and cityscape in the 19th century

In addition to the cityscape and architectural photographs - by Carl Abt, Carl Böttcher, Theodor Creifelds, Carl Friedrich Fay, Karl Hertel and others - the most comprehensive collection by the photographer Carl Friedrich Mylius is one of the outstanding treasures of the 19th century. The portrait collection also includes the historically significant daguerreotypes by photographer Jacob Seib of members of the Frankfurt Paulskirche (1848) and colored portraits of Frankfurt citizens on salted paper from the studios of Fritz and Julie Vogel and Steinberger & Bauer.

The development of modern photography in the 20th century

In the 20th century, the collection expanded - in addition to cityscapes, city history and portraits - in the areas of artist and reportage photography, as well as through special collections on the First and Second World Wars.

Today, the list of photographers comprises more than 600 names, including 800 glass negatives by Carl Abt for the first half of the 20th century and works from the Paul Wolff & Tritschler studio, which document Frankfurt's old town in a special way. Works by Hermann Collischonn, Grete Leistikow, Martha Hoepffner and Ilse Bing represent the modernism of the New Frankfurt. A series of photographs of May Day demonstrations by photographer Gisèle Freund shows the political confrontation shortly before the Nazi dictatorship.

Since the reopening of the museum in 1972, various exhibition and collection projects have brought extensive collections into the museum, which are currently still being catalogued. These include the photographer estates of Friedrich Lauffer and Max Göllner, the stereonegative collection of Wilhelm Straub and the archive of the Nazi photojournalist Otto Emmel.

Artistic positions

From the 1980s onwards, the photo collection was repeatedly supplemented by purchases of thematic series that used artistic means to explore the cityscape or examine political and social phenomena: For example, Martin Starl's study of Frankfurt's water houses, Gerald Domenig's pictures from Frankfurt, Rami Tufi's work Mosques and Meike Fischer's project Demolition Frankfurt show the transformation of urban space. In addition, Erika Sulzer-Kleinemeier's investigations into the living and working conditions of migrant workers, the portraits of homeless people and Abisag Tüllmann's documentation of the housing war in the Westend district point to the social upheavals in urban society.

New collection themes: Fashion, protest culture and migration

With the acquisition of the photo archive of the Frankfurt Fashion Office on fashion during the Nazi era, a collection focus on fashion photography was created at the end of the 1990s, which was expanded through extensive additions to the work of the Institut für Modeschaffen and the Toni Schiesser fashion studio and with collections of fashion photographers, including Lilo Gwosdz and Regina Relang.

The photographic documentation of protest culture and the new social movements in Frankfurt also established itself as a new theme: from the actions of the student, apprentice and youth center movement to the Frankfurt housing struggle to the Occupy Camp and the Blockupy demonstrations. The activities of the women's movement are represented by photographs from the estate of the photographer Gerda Jäger.

From 2005 to 2011, the exhibition projects of the "Galerie Migration" enriched the collection with photographic portraits of Frankfurters of Italian origin by Gunter Klötzer and three black and white series by Heiko Arendt on migration issues in the city.

Collection growth

The photography collection is constantly growing thanks to small and large donations and donations in kind from Frankfurters who give their own souvenir photos or albums of their ancestors as well as large professional estates to the museum for viewing and selection.
Two new donations exemplify this development: the selection of 1,700 black and white photographs and slides by the internationally active Swedish photographer Calle Hesslefors. Between the 1960s and the end of the 1990s, he reported on political and cultural topics from Frankfurt, the US Army, the jazz scene and, together with the city's press office, developed two city photo books on the rhythm of life in Frankfurt.
The estate of police chief inspector and photographer Fred Prase with his social studies from Frankfurt's Bahnhofsviertel district is only just being viewed and inventoried. His pictures from the district, his precinct, tell stories from the 1980s of victims and perpetrators, of the everyday lives of prostitutes, drug addicts and the homeless, of the living spaces of migrants and the work of the police with critical sympathy.