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Size Matters.
Größe in der Fotografie
Kunstpalast Düsseldorf

Turning Familiar Relations of Size Upside Down

Everything changes when visuals are manipulated by altering the sizes of things: objects are thrown into relief, torn from their contexts, exaggerated, and reinterpreted. They move up close so we can study them or become blurry before our eyes. Shifts of scale in photography entail a significant change in meaning that often goes unnoticed. Photography can change its size with ease, nimbly expanding into a sweeping picture on a museum wall or shrinking down to a thumbnail on a smartphone screen. Photography creates miniatures of the world, but it can also show things in their true dimensions or in larger-than-life depictions and even let us see the invisible.

The publication Size Matters. Größe in der Fotografie (Scale in Photography) turns the spotlight on how the medium’s dimensional versatility is key to its powerful role in cultural, social, and political contexts. The experimental volume published in conjunction with the exhibition presents works dating from between the mid-nineteenth century and the present, in their full size—whether that is the entire picture or as much detail as fits on a page of the book. The presentation raises questions about the consequences of size for how we perceive and engage with photographic images.

With works by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky, Duane Michals, Seth Price, Katharina Sieverding, Wolfgang Tillmans, Kathrin Sonntag, and others; essays by Linda Conze, curator of the exhibition, as well as Tomáš Dvořák, Ellen Haak, Lilian Haberer, Vera Knippschild, Oliver Lugon, Bettina Papenburg, Steffen Siegel, Kathrin Schönegg, Anja Schürmann, and Vera Tollmann; and an excerpt from a conversation between Thomas Ruff and Florian Ebner.