Ulrike Ottinger

For the first time, The Hidden Museum presents a selection of Ulrike Ottinger's black and white portraits in a visual dialogue with portrait photographs from the joint Ottinger / Sykora collection.
In addition to working on the films, the photographs to determine the location and the search for a motif, Ulrike Ottinger has also always taken photographs as an independent art.
At the center of her photographic work are documentary and staged portraits of artists, especially of people from different cultures, whom she encounters on her extensive travels. All of them can be seen the joy of self-expression with which they react to the photographer's gaze. From the beginning of her artistic activity, Ulrike Ottinger has dedicated herself to photography, with which she sets visual accents.
Her photographic works have been shown in major art exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, the Documenta Kassel and the Berlin Biennale and travel around the world in solo exhibitions.
Connected in friendship to the grotesque dancer Valeska Gert for decades through film work, Ottinger captured the great Mimin in unforgettable portraits.
In addition to historical portraits by Valeska Gert, e.g. by Lotte Jacobi, Willy Maywald, Suse Byk, Herbert Tobias, who, like artist portraits by Cami Stone, Man Ray, Gisèle Freund and many more, come from the Ottinger / Sykora collection.
The focus of Ottinger's interest is on portraits of artist personalities from the 1920s, increasingly also from the 1950s and 1960s. The first presentation of photographs from the collection with the works of Ulrike Ottinger opens surprising correspondences.

The illustrated book “Vis à Vis” will appear with numerous illustrations from the Ottinger / Sykora Collection and the portrait photographs by Ulrike Ottinger. With texts by Katharina Sykora, Sissi Tax and Eva Meyer. German / English, 165 pages.