The Graphic Collection of the Cologne City Museum includes a comprehensive photographic collection (including approx. 20,000 picture postcards), which comprises some 20 percent of the stock. The museum’s very first objects included photographs from the stock of the Historical Archive and the city building department.
The focus of the photography therefore lies on urban profile and architecture, which also covers the Rhineland at least until 1945. But this was swiftly followed by portraits and “costume pictures”, images of unknown persons of every gender and age, which were collected on account of their clothing. Until the mid-20th century, the city collected photography essentially in the form of documentation; artistic photography did not follow until it acquired August Sander’s portfolio “Köln wie es war” (“Cologne the way it was”), naturally also under the aspect of urban history, profile, culture or architecture. This practice is continued to this day.
The invited artist will be able to draw on this fund, be the subject individual artist personalities, aspects of urban profile photography from 1853 to today, portraits.
Kölnisches Stadtmuseum
Minoritenstraße 11
DE-50667 Cologne
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