Curated by Franziska Schmidt
In partnership with the Estate of Kilian Breier
The exhibition is part of the EMOP—European Month of Photography 2025
The Alfred Ehrhardt Stiftung invites you to the exhibition Kilian Breier: Abstract Concrete—Matter, Light, and Form focusing on the work of German avant-garde photographer Kilian Breier (1931–2011). Breier is regarded as one of the leading experimental photographic artists of the post-war period. The exhibition offers an insightful glimpse into his development as an artist and demonstrates Breier’s understanding of photography as a medium that produces its own kind of imagery.
Breier’s work is characterized by the idea that photography is significantly more than just a means for depicting reality. He regarded it as a method for generating images that do not show what is visibly apparent but instead form unique, often abstract visuals realms. For decades, he explored the possibilities of using light, chemical processes, and camera-less techniques to create images that transcend traditional photography.
From Nature to Abstraction: The Path of an Experimenter
The exhibition presents around fifty photographic works from the 1950s to the 1980s, including works exhibited for the first time, showcasing Breier’s developmental arc from objective representations of nature to complete abstractions. Even in his early student works created around 1953, he made use of random constellations of elements from his everyday surroundings—such as perpendicular, densely packed trees, thick undergrowth, or woodpiles—abstracting the structures and forms of these motifs via light and shadow. His aim was not to depict nature realistically but rather to create graphic and high-contrast portrayals of its aesthetic elements. These early works reveal Breier’s interest in reducing nature to its essential forms as well as the graphic qualities of abstract photography.
At the same time, Breier experimented with camera-less techniques such as the photogram, in which objects are placed directly onto light-sensitive photographic paper and exposed. Grasses, leaves, and various natural materials were defamiliarized in the darkroom. Other motifs were produced with negative reversals or by montaging copies. Also created were unique image forms such as half-tones, or partially exposed photographic paper. Breier’s experiments, which he also expanded to include photochemical processes such as oxidation, are evidence of his search for the “zero point” of photography—the moment in which the image is decoupled from representing an objective reality.
Cameraless Photography: Chemigraphics
Breier not only used the camera but also explored novel ways of creating images. In the 1980s, Breier continued his experiments with unfixed chemigraphics, treating photographic paper with chemicals in order to cause a continuous oxidation of the light-sensitive layer. These works reveal the dynamic character of his art, as the images continuously change over time and never reach completion. Breier described these works as photographic “archetypal signs” that reference their own development and the passage of time, rather than just a given moment as in conventional camera photography.
Breier’s Influence and Teaching
Kilian Breier studied in Saarbrücken and Paris, where he specialized in printmaking, painting, and photography. He began his professional career as an assistant to photographer Otto Steinert and Oskar Holweck, a representative of the Zero movement, who had a strong influence on his experimental working methods. From 1960 to 1966, Breier taught photography and animation at the Werkkunstschule in Darmstadt. From 1966 to 1999, he was a professor of photography at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg (HFBK). A member of the neuen gruppe saar and representative of the Zero movement, he is a leading figure in the development of experimental photography.
Breier’s works reflect an intensive engagement with the visual language of photography that goes far beyond mere technical application. He was always seeking new ways to harmonize light, form, and matter and to expand the perception of photography as an art form.
On show at GALERIE PARROTTA CONTEMPORARY ART (Cologne and Burg Lede Bonn): Kilian Breier—Am Nullpunkt der Gestaltung
February 7 to March 21, 2025