FAZ Book
Text by René Schlott
Messmer reveals these continuities in German history, in which the “dream of the empire,” as the subtitle of the volume says, lives on, by giving space to the layers of time embedded in his photographic objects. And the title-giving term “deep rubble removal,” which refers to the removal of all foundations in the ground when houses are demolished, reflects this image-archaeological intention.
© All rights reserved. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH, Frankfurt (archive).…

Book Launch | artist talk
Thursday, February 22, 2024 from 6 p.m.
at Bildband Berlin Immanuelkirchstraße 33, 10405 Berlin

CLEARING THE DEPTHS. The Dream of the Reich
Maren Lübbke-Tidow in conversation with Arwed Messmer about photography, memory and artistic practices in dealing with one’s own archive.
More Information…

taz bildwelt
“Landscapes of demolition, landscapes of reconstruction”
Text by Daniel Schulz
Arwed Messmer’s photos tell of the early post-reunification period. People often talk about the 1990s in the East in the way his pictures show: as if people had stepped out of life – present, but not there.
(with courtesy by taz)…

taz kultur
Announcement of the socially hardened
When the photographer Arwed Messmer gives his recently published book of photographs the title “Deep Debris Clearance”, this is accompanied by the feeling of a cleansing – albeit in favor of a gloomy perspective. Rubble is ruins in an advanced state of dissolution. They finally disintegrate and merge into the landscape, but, as one can assume from Messmer’s work, they have a long lasting effect. Only when they are cleared away do they disappear as a drawing archive. Go to Article…

Deutschlandfunk Kultur
The blank spaces of the post-reunification period
In his illustrated book “Deep Debris Removal,” the photographer Arwed Messmer shows East Germany in the 1990s as a landscape in a state of waiting. “The old is disappearing, the new is not yet recognizable,” says the West German, summing up his motives. Listen……

Süddeutsche Zeitung
Digging up the Republic
The most remarkable photo book of the past year. Arwed Messmer is now known as an artist primarily for his work with image archives. Under the title “Deep Debris Clearance” he is now presenting his own photo archive from that period, which seems to be characterized less by departure than by demolition. Go to Article……

Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
Institute for Advanced Study
Berlin, VINETA
A German city building history
The focus of my artistic and image archaeological practice is on researching, processing and re-contextualizing collections of commercial photographic images from public archives. The original function of these recordings – such as technical photographs for urban development, surveillance or recording recordings by state security forces – has now expired.  Read more……

The Walther Collection, NYC artist talk
Reception and Walkthrough 5. and 6. Dec. 2019
The Walter Collection Project Space. View gallery
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„Bruchstellen“ | Das latente Bild des Archivs
Lecture of the cooperation project 12.06.19
Academy of fine arts, Leipzig
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»Everything is evidence, but of what?«
Lecture and conversation on 20.05.2019
with Arwed Messmer and Markus Hartmann
Staatliche Akademie Stuttgart…

Harrowing and haunting | The Guardian 
review 11.03.19
His work – as researcher rather than photographer – shows us what the West German state saw and how it recorded its own actions: the brutal policing and suppression of protest, the examination of evidence, recordings of suicide and circumstance, glimpses of the private lives of the RAF, before their capture and later in prison. It also reminds us of a world before total digital surveillance. Messmer’s is the strongest, in terms of its thoroughness and historical importance, and its display.  Read more…

The Photographers Gallery | London
Exhibition 08.03. – 02.06.19
The Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize is an annual award established by The Photographers’ Gallery, London, in 1997 and in partnership with the Deutsche Börse Group since 2005 to identify and support talent, excellence and innovation. In 2016 the prize was renamed to reflect its new position within the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, a specifically established non-profit organisation focused on the collecting, exhibiting and promoting of contemporary photography. Website…

c|o Berlin Exhibition – Das letzte Bild 
08.12.18 – 03.03.19
Photographic works depict dramatic moments of killing, dying, and death with such intensity and complexity that the dead almost seem to still be alive. In medical or forensic contexts, photographs serve as detached and emotionless documents in which the dead body appears to be little more than an object. And some photographers have created allegories of death in which Death itself is either nowhere to be seen or almost unbearably present. Some of these images are so powerful that we feel we are looking our own mortality in the eye. Pdf…

Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2019
Arwed Messmer is one of the finalists
Arwed Messmer (b. 1964, Germany) has been nominated for his exhibition RAF – No Evidence / Kein Beweis (ZEPHYR|Raum für Fotografie, Mannheim, 9 September – 5 November 2017). By repurposing and recontextualising the tools and materials commonly used in police investigations and crime-scene reconstructions, Messmer’s ‘narrative’ examines how images once used to collect evidence in criminal cases can now provide a different insight into our understanding of history.…

C|O Berlin Buchpräsentation & Gespräch
28.11.2017
Messmers Arbeit hat auch eine bildethische Dimension: Welche Aufnahmen darf man zeigen? Wie kann man sie zeigen? Und warum sollen wir sie sehen? Damit rührt Messmer an einen zentralen Punkt in der Debatte über Bilder, die einerseits historische Dokumente sind, andererseits ihre eigene Ästhetik und ein großes, kaum steuerbares Potential für die empathische Auseinandersetzung mit Geschichte aufweisen. Gerade in den späten 1960er- und 70er-Jahren war das Amerika Haus am Bahnhof Zoo immer wieder Ort des politischen Protestes.…

Deichtorhallen Hamburg
Tagungen der Deutschen Fotografischen Akademie 25./26.11.2017
In der aktuellsten Arbeit RAF – No Evidence / Kein Beweis widmet Messmer sich dem, für die bundesrepublikanische Geschichte so wichtigen Jahrzehnt von 1967 bis 1977. Das Ausgangsmaterial besteht aus Aufnahmen von Polizeifotografen zum westdeutschen Linksterrorismus, die er in den großen deutschen Bundes- und Staatsarchiven gesichtet, recherchiert, gescannt und neu editiert hat. Messmer stellt diesen Bildern die Frage, wie die ehemalige kriminalistische Spurensuche heute als künstlerische Recherche produktiv werden kann – im Sinne einer anderen Erkenntnis dieser Zeit. So 26.11. 2017 um 13.30 – 14.15 Arwed Messmer – Die (Bild)Perspektive des Staates.…

36. Bielefelder Fotosymposium
Bildpraktiken des Raumes II – 30.11.2017
Es geht um die Darstellung und Generierung von Räumen im Bild. Das Spektrum an Raumkonzepten umfasst sowohl topografische wie auch topologische Beschreibungsformen des Raumes, reicht von virtuellen zu heterotopen und fiktiven Orten, die sich aufgrund ihrer historischen und symbolischen Komplexität der Idee eines neutralen und homogenen Raumes ebenso entziehen wie der Abbildungsfunktion der Fotografie, oder setzt Ordnungen des Raumes als soziale Ordnungen ins Bild. Website…

Time  Interview
Go Inside East Germany’s Stasi Archives by Jeffrey Ladd
During the Cold War many countries had agencies set up under the premise to protect their state and gather intelligence whether of foreign nature or domestic. The CIA and KGB were the main agencies on the two sides of the ideological coin but neither seemed as effective or repressive as East Germany’s Ministerium für Staatssicherheit (Ministry for State Security), colloquially known as the Stasi. The Stasi was known for its widespread spying on the population of East Germany and turning family members into informants against relatives.   Website…

Morgenpost  Article – Taking Stock Of Power
Was nur DDR-Grenzer fotografieren durften von Alexander Gumz
Ein zufällig in die Schusslinie geratener Grenzer steht vor dem Potsdamer Platz. Man sieht ihn von hinten, im Anschnitt, einen Fotoapparat vor den Augen, in seiner Linken ein Zigarettenstummel. Vor ihm eine Wüste: märkischer Sand, kurzes Gras, rissiger Asphalt. Ganz weit im Hintergrund die Philharmonie. Davor: ein überwachtes Nichts. Schwer zu glauben, dass vor dem Mauerbau hier ein urbaner Platz vor sich hin ratterte. Website…

FAZ  Article – Taking Stock Of Power
Provisorisch, aber mit brutalem Willen von Regina Mönch
Entstanden ist ein Kunstwerk der besonderen Art, pathosfrei, aber überwältigend. Durch die Säle des Hauses mäandert noch einmal das, was alle als „Mauer“ kennen, ausgewählt aus unzähligen Einzelbildern und 1059 Panoramen, die allesamt in den Begleitbänden zu sehen sind – der Grenzverlauf um ganz Berlin herum als verwunschene, entleerte Landschaft des Schreckens. Website…

Cphmag  Photobook Review
Fruchtstraße am 27. März 1952/on March 27, 1952
On March 27, 1952, commissioned by municipal authorities, Fritz Tiedemann set out to photograph Berlin’s Fruchtstraße, between Ostbahnhof and Stalinallee (now Karl-Marx-Allee). Employing two assistants holding long measuring rods, Tiedemann set up his large-format camera at 32 spots along the street’s length, to produce a record of what the buildings looked like. Decades later, Arwed Messmer digitally combined the individual photographs to produce, essentially, Every Building on Fruchtstraße.   Website…

Cphmag  Photobook Review
Reenactment MfS
A more recent book, Arwed Messmer‘s Reenactment MfS, has now upped the ante considerable in multiple ways. For a start, the book centers on the role of photography, both in the Stasi context itself, as in the larger context of how we look at and/or deal with photographs. Conceptually, the book itself also pushes the boundaries. Apart from a title page, several pages in, there is no text at all, only pictures. Where those pictures might be coming from isn’t always that obvious. Some very obviously look like crime-scene photographs.   Website…

aperture  Book Review – Taking Stock of power
Revisiting the Berlin Wall by Lisa Andergassen
In the 1960s, East German border troops photographed the entire length of the Berlin Wall, but the film was never developed. Fifty years later, a new book brings a secret archive to light.  Website…

Paris Foto 2016  Preview
Taking Stock of Power: An Other View of the Berlin Wall
Annett Gröschner and Arwed Messmer
Hatje Cantz…

SWR2  Radio broadcast
RAF – From the criminalistic search to the artistic
The so-called “Deutscher Herbst” was forty years ago, and it has since been measured more than thoroughly. The high and low point of the RAF terror in September / October 1977 has also been worked on in numerous artistic and political debates, in feature and documentary films, on paintings by Gerhard Richter, self-explanatory experiments such as the illustrated book “Hansel and Gretel” by Astrid Proll. At the Biennale for current photography in Heidelberg, Ludwigshafen and Mannheim, the Berlin photographer and archaeologist Arwed Messmer ventures on the mined terrain of the RAF. …

taz Dossier
„Here you can see Ensslin´s record player“ Dossier from 2/3.09.2017
The cell in Stuttgart-Stammheim, the polaroid of Schleyer, are iconic images of the RAF. The photographer Arwed Messmer looked for motifs beyond the familiar. We show some of them.…

Stiftung Buchkunst  Award
Inventarisierung der Macht
Category: art books, photobooks, exhibition catalogs
Jury Statement: Black and white on light, gregarious paper. Boring like the border observation. File default. Documentation of the documentation. The constant attention – banned on this built, continuous line in the countryside, in the city – tired the look, grinds the horizon. This work is a worthy political gift for every citizen who dreams of walls. Website …

Biennale Fotografie Mannheim  Exhibition
ZEPHYR Raum für Fotografie C 4, 9
Farewell Photography
RAF – No Evidence / Kein Beweis
Opening on September 8th, 2017
When societal upheavals, political events and traumatic moments are reduced to a few public images, it is rewarding to take a closer look at these and to consult others. For example, this exhibition poses the question of the connection between photographic and content-related perspective, of the direction of the camera and of the attitude behind the camera. Website …

1000 Words  Book Review
Zelle / Cell by Gerry Badger
In 1977, Larry Sultan and Mike Mandel produced their famed book entitled Evidence, in which a collection of anonymous photographs from government and corporate archives – presented without commentary – looked liked an exhibition of images by the latest young art photographers…  Website …

Kassel Photobook Award 2017
Zelle/Cell
selected by Gerry Badger
The book Zelle/Cell is in the expert selection of the “Kassel Photobook Award 2017” and was nominated by the British photography critic and book specialist Gerry Badger. Website…

Autophoto  Exhibition
Fondation Cartier, Paris
Opening on April 20th, 2017
Thirty years after the exhibition Hommage à Ferrari, the Fondation Cartier will once again focus its attention on the world of cars with the exhibition Autophoto dedicated to photography’s relationship to the automobile. Since its invention, the automobile has reshaped our landscape, extended our geographic horizons and radically altered our conception of space and time, consequently influencing the approach and practice of photographers….  …

Museum Folkwang  Exhibition
RAF – No Evidence / Kein Beweis
June 9th – September 3rd, 2017
Much has been written and told from a journalistic, historical, literary, and cinematic perspective about the Red Army Faction and the ‘German Autumn’ of 1977. For his latest work, the photographer and image archaeologist Arwed Messmer adopts a photographic point of view to explore this particular chapter of West German history. Website…

taz Article
“40 years later” by Bettina Müller 
The photographer Arwed Messmer has spotted neglected negatives from the Berlin police archive for the abduction of Peter Lorenz and the movement June 2nd.
He has revived it.…