Anna Lehmann-Brown “Stages” is the new book, published by Hartmann Projects and an exhibition in the project room of the Fondation Helmut Newtonuntil November 10, 2024. Matthias Harderthe director of the Newton Foundation in Berlin, writes in the book’s introduction:
Light and shadow, as well as very soft and incredibly lush colors, come together in harmonious balance in Anna Lehmann-Brauns’ photographs. In some cases we see found or constructed spaces, melancholic and urban landscapes, vistas and panoramas, while in others the spatial depth is deliberately distorted. The Berlin photographer focuses very subtly on a few visual details; sometimes almost ghostly situations arise, for example when the curtains in front of an open window billow in a gust of wind. The slight blur leads to an illusion of movement and, in our minds, we enlarge the frozen interior into something sequential, even cinematic. Many places in Lehmann-Brauns’s photographs could very well be scenes or sets – and his photos sometimes look like stills from films. We know this kind of situation, as well as other comparable ones from our own visions and memories, but it is in the paintings of Lehmann-Brauns that they develop for the first time a particular poetry, the magic of beauty of the past.
It all started with the beautifully outfitted doll-sized room models that she built, created and photographed towards the end of her studies at the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (Academy of Fine Arts) in Leipzig . Already at that time, she was playing with the notion of authenticity, with illusion and reality. However, upon closer inspection, we come to recognize the model qualities of this first series of images, which she continues to pursue today, several years later. Some light-filled interiors are children’s bedrooms, where bottles or furniture have been turned upside down, hinting at a moment of horror that could transform the entire scene in a second. Space can be understood as a stage not only in his images of Berlin theaters, but also in the empty LGBT+ bars of San Francisco, which are the subject of another of his series. Lehmann-Brauns is interested in photo sequences in general. Within each of the individual images in the series, there is an intriguing and richly associative narrative that develops further from one image to the next in the series. It’s as if we go from bar to bar, before they open or after they close – and this corresponds to the specific situation of each photograph.
People do not exist in his photographs, only their traces exist. Or, to put it another way: we seem to feel them. It looks like they all just left the room, or maybe the stage. There is no one on the empty seats on the ferry to the Princes’ Islands, in the hotel lobby, at the bar or at the billiards table in Berlin’s bars; no one goes to the pool or the beach. From time to time, the absence of our fellow human beings shifts the atmosphere into dystopia, which is in a flash rediscovered and balanced by intense, even optimistic, colors.
The list of sites she photographed matches, among other things, the succession of renowned travel grants the photographer received after submitting her previous series of photos: Istanbul, San Francisco, Beijing, supplemented by trips to Italy and Mexico.
The places where she lives, Berlin and Leipzig, however, remain the sites of most of her images. His series on flea markets was created in these cities, mainly in 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, which almost paralyzed everyone’s social lives. This is reflected in the windows of these antique dealers, which the photographer has completely reinterpreted through this appropriation; objects from decades past are presented as if they were completely timeless.
Despite their layers of dust and their outdated aesthetic, the globes, clocks, busts of Goethe, porcelain figurines, glass ashtrays and stuffed animals represent their former owners. Sometimes a small price destroys the illusion of timelessness, returning us to the reality of capitalism’s commercial merry-go-round. The current location of abandoned objects, sometimes expensive, sometimes almost worthless, makes them survivors of sorts, and they shout, sometimes shrilly and loudly, their existence to passers-by looking in shop windows. It is a contemporary vision of a diffuse temporality which, like any photographic image, naturally only highlights an intermediate state.
The same goes for bars and theaters, some of which disappeared shortly after these photos were taken. For the Kurfürstendamm theater, which Lehmann-Brauns documented in 2018, just before its demolition, the final curtain had literally fallen. It is likely that very few theater props survived and since then the Ku’damm Theater has moved to the former Schiller Theater and then to Potsdamer Platz. These temporary uses and conversions are typical of Berlin, a city that is in a state of constant change, that “is always becoming and never is,” to quote Karl Scheffler from the Roaring Twenties.
What was true a century ago is still true in this city. Anna Lehmann-Brauns’ series of images documents a specific situation, while symbolizing the constant and radical changes that occur in a large urban system. In this sense, this new publication and the presentation in the project room of the Helmut Newton Foundation, parallel to “Berlin, Berlin” on the first floor, are an extremely useful complement.
(Matthias Harder, from the introduction to “Anna Lehmann-Brauns, Stages”, Hartmann 2024)
Anna Lehmann-Braun : Stages
Hartmann Projects
28 × 32,5 cm
120 pages, ca. 75 illustrations
Texts apr Barbara Esch Marowski and Matthias Harder
Design: Heimann + Schwantes, Berlin
German/English
ISBN 978-3-96070-112-5
€40.00 incl. Including VAT, plus shipping costs
https://www.hartmannprojects.com/
Helmut Newton Foundation
In the Museum of Photography
Jebensstrasse 2
10623 Berlin, Germany
https://helmut-newton-foundation.org/en/
