Opening light

Walther Grunwald

Opening Light is the title Walther Grunwald gave to his series of black-and-white photographs made between 1956 and 2000. In a play on Hermann Hesse’s “A magic dwells in each beginning,” the Berlin photographer’s motto is “A beginning dwells in each roll-film.”

Insert, spool, shoot. With analogue photography, the first exposures are usually rejected. In 2000, Grunwald subjected his documentary photos from five decades to a conceptual analysis. He discovered a fascinating interplay between documentary calculation and the traces of chance, particularly in that first moment of pressing the shutter.

Artifacts immanent to the image and double exposures, broad white stripes and dissolving edges transform landscapes, urban details, and people into mysterious scenes and add a unique poetry, humor, and energy to the black-and-white photographs. The respective first photograph forms the beginning of a series that viewers can carry on in their own minds: it sets the fantasy in motion.

A retrospective exhibition of a very special kind.