"THE END / NOT THE END?"
La jeune photographie allemande - Gütschow and Alex Grein

Exhibition: 10 November 2022 – 4 January 2023
Opening, Thursday, 10 November, 6:30 pm

Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and Goethe-Institut Paris show works by students of Beate Gütschow and Alex Grein.

As part of the exhibition series "La jeune photographie allemande", this year, students of the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne are showing photographic-installative works under the title "The End/ Not the End?" that deal with the global dimension and complexity of the ecological crisis. The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation organises the exhibition series annually in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Paris.

The artists, supervised by Prof. Beate Gütschow and Alex Grein, develop poetic narratives of doom in which grief is paired with a will to act. The aim of the art is to make the invisible visible. The exhibition will open at the Goethe-Institut Paris, on 10 November 2022 at 18:30 during the international photography fair PARIS PHOTO.

The artistic positions of the exhibition "The End / Not the End?" reflect on the progressing destruction of our planet as well as the resulting need for action. They question artificial intelligences about the future of the world, describe the climate crisis as a temporally and spatially delimited hyper object and find new, haptic images for the dying of ecosystems, that are essential to the balance of nature and the planet. Their works address illegal waste disposal as well as the effects of coal mining or the permanent pollution of rivers through water use in large cities in Germany. They also impressively visualise the influence our consumer behaviour has on regions of other continents, be it the hunting of protected animals in Mongolia or the mining of lithium in Argentina. The images produced by the artists are also an emotional wake-up call that a quick reaction to the climate crisis is possible and necessary.

Friday, December 11 at 11 am
Panel discussion in English on the topic Join photographers Cristina de Middel and David Hurn
The Photographer's Legacy: Legacy in the Digital Age

Saturday, November 12 from 9:30 am
Colloquium in German and French on the topic
Au rendez-vous des amis : Photography between two languages and different practices

With the exhibition series "La jeune photographie allemande", the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation and the Goethe-Institut Paris, have been promoting young photographers at German universities since 2018, showing current trends in photography. Each year, students from a selected university or academy are invited to present their work in an exhibition at the Goethe-Institut Paris. After an exhibition by Martin Liebscher’s photography class at the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach (HfG) in 2018 and one by Heidi Specker’s Master’s students at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB) Leipzig in 2019, Adam Broomberg’s and Oliver Chanarin’s photography class at the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK) in 2021.

The participating artists are: Javkhlan Ariunbold, Victor Beger, Caroline Brünen, Cédric Ernoult and Giorgi Gedevanidze, Alex Simone Klug and Kristina Lenz, Clara Kulemeyer, Soojins Ok, Ivana Pavlíčková.