Co-founded before photo work was taken seriously as art, this Berlin venue is marking its half-century by celebrating the history of its collection – and the medium itself
When Annette Kicken’s late husband, Rudolf, founded a photo gallery in Aachen, Germany, in 1974, appreciation of photography as an art form was rare. Major German photographic museums, such as Museum Ludwig in Cologne or C/O Berlin, were years away from opening. In the UK, the National Portrait Gallery had only just appointed its first curator of photography. In the US, the Metropolitan Museum of Art would not establish a department of photographs until 1992. The number of galleries and collectors devoted to the medium was so small that they referred to themselves as an international “photo family”.
“It was a very, very small scene,” says Kicken, who joined the gallery in 1999. “There were very few institutional exhibitions. There was no market. Artists were forgotten, and their work was often just thrown away.”