{"id":562862,"date":"2025-11-11T04:56:20","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T04:56:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/562862\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T04:56:20","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T04:56:20","slug":"selections-from-the-walther-collection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/562862\/","title":{"rendered":"Selections from The Walther Collection\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tLast May the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced that photography collector <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/photographic-memory-artur-walther-has-what-may-be-the-worlds-largest-and-most-important-private-collection-of-african-photography-2-5279\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Artur Walther<\/a>, via his Walther Family Foundation, had made a promised gift to the museum of more than 6,500 works. Now, as a foretaste of a larger exhibition to come in 2028, 40 pieces from the gift are on view in the show \u201cView Finding: Selections from the Walther Collection.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tWalther, who has been collecting photographs and time-based media for 30 years, is best known for the breadth of his holdings in African photography, which range from post-WWII and apartheid-era studio photographs by Seydou Ke\u00efta and S. J. Moodley, respectively, to contemporary works by the likes of Santu Mofokeng, Zanele Muholi, and Guy Tillim.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tBut these holdings also encompass German modernist photography by August Sander and Karl Blossfeldt; typologies by Bernd and Hilla Becher and works by their students at the Kunstakademie D\u00fcsseldorf; post\u2013Tiananmen Square Chinese conceptual and video art of the late 20th century; extended series by contemporary Japanese photographers Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama, and Kohei Yoshiyuki; and examples of vernacular photography, including commercial, forensic, and ethnographic images, from the 1800s to the present.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tA guiding principle behind the collection is the evolution of the photographic medium, since its invention and around the globe, as an indicator of\u2014and force for\u2014social and political change in the modern era. It favors photographic series, with works ranging from motion studies by pioneering 19th-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge to staged self-portraits by Cameroonian Nigerian artist Samuel Fosso, and from Richard Avedon\u2019s 1970s depictions of American politicians to a set of photographs of nameless inmates of a psychiatric hospital from 1920.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tBelow are ten representative works in the Met\u2019s new exhibition.<\/p>\n<ul class=\"pmc-fallback-list-items lrv-a-unstyle-list lrv-u-margin-t-2\">\n<li class=\"pmc-fallback-list-item-wrap lrv-u-margin-b-2\">\n<p>\tBernd and Hilla Becher (German, 1931\u20132007; 1934\u20132015) Grain Elevators, 1982\u201387<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"293\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Bernd and Hilla Becher (German, 1931\u20132007; 1934\u20132015) Grain Elevators, 1982\u201387\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Bernd-and-Hilla-Becher_Grain-Elevators-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Promised gift of the Walther Family Foundation. Artwork copyright \u00a9 2025 Estate of Bernd Becher and Hilla Becher.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tInspired by the Neue Sachlichkeit (\u201cNew Objectivity\u201d) photographers August Sander and Albert Renger-Patzsch, as well as by vernacular photography, Bernd and Hilla Becher documented vanishing European and American industrial architecture such as blast furnaces, water towers, silos, and the like, organizing them by type. Produced between 1959 and 2007, the year of Bernd\u2019s death, the couple\u2019s grouped images of similar structures initially found a receptive audience among the Minimalist and Conceptual artists of the 1970s. Pieces by Sander and other German modernists, along with the Bechers\u2019 typologies and works by Bernd\u2019s students Thomas Struth and Thomas Ruff, formed the original nucleus of Walther\u2019s collection.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"pmc-fallback-list-item-wrap lrv-u-margin-b-2\">\n<p>\tSantu Mofokeng (South African, 1956\u20132020)Winter in Tembisa, 1991<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"260\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Santu Mofokeng (South African, 1956\u20132020) Winter in Tembisa, 1991\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Santu-Mofokeng_Winter-in-Tembisa-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Promised gift of the Walther Family Foundation. Artwork copyright \u00a9 Santu Mofokeng Foundation.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tSouth African photojournalist Santu Mofokeng, who died in 2020 at age 63, began his career in the 1970s as a street photographer before joining Afrapix, an anti-apartheid photographers\u2019 collective, in the 1980s. He is best known, however, for images taken in the \u201980s and \u201990s of South African township life, such as this haunting picture of a barren, fog-shrouded landscape dominated by a towering advertising sign for detergent. In works like these, Mofokeng, long concerned with photojournalism\u2019s tendency toward simplistic representations, presents a more nuanced view of the South African Black experience.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"pmc-fallback-list-item-wrap lrv-u-margin-b-2\">\n<p>\tOlad\u00e9l\u00e9 Ajiboy\u00e9 Bamgboy\u00e9 (Nigerian, born 1963) Celebrate 1\u20138, 1994<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"352\" height=\"700\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Olad\u00e9l\u00e9 Ajiboy\u00e9 Bamgboy\u00e9 (Nigerian, born 1963) Celebrate 1\u20138, 1994\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/X_Bamgboye_Celebrate1-8-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Promised gift of the Walther Family Foundation. Artwork copyright \u00a9 Olad\u00e9l\u00e9 Ajiboy\u00e9 Bamgboy\u00e9.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tDrawing on the history of African studio photography by such giants as Seydou Ke\u00efta, in which sitters enacted their will to self-determination, and perhaps inspired as well by the self-portraiture of contemporaries like Rotimi Fani-Kayode, London-based Nigerian photographer Olad\u00e9l\u00e9 Ajiboy\u00e9 Bamgboy\u00e9 here shows himself as a blurred nude figure moving through a riot of colorful streamers. More lighthearted than Bamgboy\u00e9\u2019s other series, the photographs nevertheless address the challenges of cultural displacement, racial othering, and Western stereotyping of Black masculinity for immigrant Africans like himself.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"pmc-fallback-list-item-wrap lrv-u-margin-b-2\">\n<p>\tMimi Cherono Ng\u2019ok (Kenyan, born 1983), Chebet, 2008, printed 2018<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"403\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Mimi Cherono Ng'ok (Kenyan, born 1983), Chebet, 2008, printed 2018\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Ngok_Chebet.jpeg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Promised gift of the Walther Family Foundation. Artwork copyright \u00a9 Mimi Cherono Ng&#8217;ok.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tIn her series \u201cThe Other Country,\u201d Kenyan photographer Mimi Cherono Ng\u2019ok recorded moments from her travels in Africa and around the globe. Although the titles of the series\u2019 pictures of interiors, landscapes, and people offer few clues as to where, or of whom, they were taken, this photograph of a woman lying on a blanket with her arm thrown over her eyes is of one of Cherono Ng\u2019ok\u2019s sisters. On the occasion of her first U.S. solo show in 2021 at the Art Institute of Chicago, she told Art Institute associate curator Antawan Byrd, \u201cThe photographs read almost like pages in a diary\u2014records of the person I was. I always find that I\u2019m comfortable with the version of myself that produced them, and that version of me still exists somehow because of the photographs.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"pmc-fallback-list-item-wrap lrv-u-margin-b-2\">\n<p>\tAida Silvestri (Eritrean, born 1978) Awet. Eritrea to London by Car, Boat, Lorry, Train, and Aeroplane, from the series \u201cEven This Will Pass,\u201d 2013<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"562\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Aida Silvestri (Eritrean, born 1978) Awet. Eritrea to London by Car, Boat, Lorry, Train, and Aeroplane, from the series \u201cEven This Will Pass,\u201d 2013\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Aida-Silvestri_Awet.-Eritrea-to-London-by-Car-Boat-Lorry-Train-and-Aeroplane-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Promised gift of the Walther Family Foundation. Artwork \u00a9 Aida Silvestri.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe embroideries on London-based artist Aida Sylvestri\u2019s blurred portraits of Eritrean refugees trace the migrant journeys of each sitter from Eritrea to the United Kingdom. In the artist\u2019s own words, \u201cOnly a few reach their final destination after months of struggling to cross different countries. Some end up dying in the Sahara Desert or the Mediterranean Sea. Others are detained in refugee camps or prisons, and many more end up in the hands of human traffickers, where they are abused, tortured or killed unless they provide a ransom.\u201d The title of the series, \u201cEven This Will Pass,\u201d is taken from a message left on a wall on Mount Sinai; in the 2000s and early 2010s, thousands of Sudanese, Ethiopian, and Eritrean refugees crossed from Africa into Israel via the Sinai Desert.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"pmc-fallback-list-item-wrap lrv-u-margin-b-2\">\n<p>\tFran\u00e7ois-Xavier Gbr\u00e9 (Ivorian, born France, 1978) Salle des Avocats, Palais de Justice, Cap Manuel, Dakar, Senegal, 2014<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Fran\u00e7ois-Xavier Gbr\u00e9 (Ivorian, born France, 1978) Salle des Avocats, Palais de Justice, Cap Manuel, Dakar, Senegal, 2014\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Francois-Xavier-Gbre_Salle-des-Avocats-Palais-de-Justice-Cap-Manuel-Dakar-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Promised gift of Artur Walther. Artwork copyright \u00a9 Fran\u00e7ois-Xavier Gbr\u00e9.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tPrecolonial, postcolonial, and present-day Africa collide in interiors and landscapes captured by French-born Ivorian artist Fran\u00e7ois-Xavier Gbr\u00e9, who left Europe in 2010 to settle in West Africa. Here, a modernistic courthouse, built shortly before Senegal gained independence from France in 1960, appears as an environment worthy of a Surrealist painter, marked by obvious decay and featuring a central cubistic structure whose exact purpose is unclear. Not shown in the picture is the funding that will shortly transform the building into a venue for art installations and fashion shows, part of Senegal\u2019s initiative to position itself as a gateway to Africa.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"pmc-fallback-list-item-wrap lrv-u-margin-b-2\">\n<p>\tD\u00e9lio Jasse (Angolan, born 1980) Untitled, from the series \u201cTerreno Occupado,\u201d 2014<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"286\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"D\u00e9lio Jasse (Angolan, born 1980) Untitled, from the series \u201cTerreno Occupado,\u201d 2014\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Delio-Jasse_Untitled-from-the-series-Terreno-Ocupado-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Promised gift of the Walther Family Foundation. Artwork copyright \u00a9 D\u00e9lio Jasse.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tReturning to Angola in 2011 after a long, self-imposed exile, Milan-based photographer D\u00e9lio Jasse documented his hometown of Luanda as if he were an explorer from an earlier age. Reprising the antique process of cyanotype printing (of which there are several vintage examples in this show), he rendered the city, newly recovered from civil war and rebuilt by oil wealth, not in bald black-and-white photographs but in deep blue, soft-focus prints on rag paper, presenting it as unfamiliar territory.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"pmc-fallback-list-item-wrap lrv-u-margin-b-2\">\n<p>\tLuo Yongjin (Chinese, born 1960) New Residence No. 7, Luoyang, 1997<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"495\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Luo Yongjin (Chinese, born 1960) New Residence No. 7, Luoyang, 1997\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/X_LuoYongjin_Luoyang-no.-7-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Promised gift of Artur Walther. Artwork copyright \u00a9 Luo Yongjin.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe 1990s in China saw an explosion of photo-based, video, and performance work, often with political or satiric overtones, by post-Tiananmen artists. Reflecting the country\u2019s economic growth of the time, Luo Yongjin\u2019s view of a brutalist housing block in the old city of Luoyang is one of many he took of new buildings across China. The series was inspired by the work of Thomas Struth, with whom Luo Yongjin exhibited in the 1997 two-person show \u201cFace to Face\u201d in Beijing.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"pmc-fallback-list-item-wrap lrv-u-margin-b-2\">\n<p>\tKohei Yoshiyuki (Japanese, 1946\u20132022) Untitled, from the series \u201cThe Park,\u201d 1971<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"274\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Kohei Yoshiyuki (Japanese, 1946\u20132022) Untitled, from the series \u201cThe Park,\u201d 1971\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/KoheiYoshiyuki_Untitled-from-the-series-ThePark-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Promised gift of the Walther Family Foundation. Artwork copyright \u00a9 Estate of Kohei Yoshiyuki.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tIn the early 1970s, Tokyo-based photographer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/kohei-yoshiyuki-dead-1234617394\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Kohei Yoshiyuki<\/a> discovered that nocturnal sexual encounters taking place in the city\u2019s public parks were being enacted before audiences of avid voyeurs. Between 1971 and 1979, using infrared film and a custom flash, he documented not only the trysts but their observers. Strangely reminiscent of nighttime wildlife photographs, his lens captured seemingly oblivious lovers, often surrounded by zealous lurkers who approach ever closer as if longing to participate. Yoshiyuki showed life-size enlargements of the photographs in 1979 in a darkened gallery, where visitors were given flashlights to examine the images at close hand, thus replicating the photographer\u2019s own experience in shooting them.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<li class=\"pmc-fallback-list-item-wrap lrv-u-margin-b-2\">\n<p>\tUnknown American maker, Blackfoot, Idaho \u2013 SS #1, January 1948<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"644\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Unknown American maker, Blackfoot, Idaho \u2013 SS #1, January 1948\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/X_Unknown-maker_Blackfoot-Idaho-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Promised gift of the Walther Family Foundation. Photo: Eugenia Burnett Tinsley. \t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tBeginning in the 2010s, the Walther Collection expanded its purview to include vernacular photographs\u2014a genre encompassing such utilitarian or amateur images as ID pictures, vacation snapshots, mugshots, and evidence photos\u2014positing that they could reveal much about a society\u2019s cultural, economic, and political structures as well as its internalized values. This page, with three views of a gas station in Idaho, was taken from a record of Texaco\u2019s franchises in the American West. Civic and corporate projects of this kind influenced such artists as Nan Goldin and William Eggleston, as well as the Bechers.<\/p>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last May the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York announced that photography collector Artur Walther, via his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":562863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[179289,179290,4021,4020,179291,179292,4022,179293,77,179294,179295,179296,24754,179297,179298,2249,179299,16,15,179300],"class_list":{"0":"post-562862","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-african-photography","9":"tag-aida-silvestri-awet","10":"tag-arts","11":"tag-arts-and-design","12":"tag-artur-walther","13":"tag-bernd-and-hilla-becher","14":"tag-design","15":"tag-du00e9lio-jasse","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-franu00e7ois-xavier-gbru00e9","18":"tag-kohei-yoshiyuki","19":"tag-luo-yonglin","20":"tag-metropolitan-museum-of-art","21":"tag-mimi-cherono-ngu2019ok","22":"tag-oladu00e9lu00e9-ajiboyu00e9-bamgboyu00e9","23":"tag-photography","24":"tag-santu-mofokeng","25":"tag-uk","26":"tag-united-kingdom","27":"tag-vernacular-photography"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115529291492273910","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=562862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/562862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/562863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=562862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=562862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=562862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}