Gerda Schütte

With the advent of digital photography, Gerda Schu¨tte, who has been living in Paris for over 40 years, abandoned the camera – both digital and analogue – as her work tool and has since worked exclusively in the darkroom with only light and light-sensitive paper. She creates an entirely new pictorial world, which has nothing to do with the illustration of objects, but rather with visual and abstract signs and visual experiences. The perfectionist is not interested in a return to the beginnings of photography, but rather in the process-based nature of pictorial invention. Her work stands in the grand tradition of abstract photography and has been presented in important exhibitions, including, most recently, Alchemy – The Great Art in Berlin’s Kulturforum. This trilingual publication accompanies the survey exhibition in celebration of the artist’s 75th birthday at Galerie Semjon Contemporary and Galerie im Museum Tempelhof, Berlin. An introduction into the work of Schu¨tte is provided by an essay by Ludger Derenthal, Director of the Museum for Photography, Berlin, an interview with the artist by Matthias Harder, Chief Curator of the Helmut Newton Foundation, Berlin, and a preface by the editor, Semjon H. N. Semjon.