Foto: Anna-Lisa Langhoff © NRWKS

Close Up – Duesseldorf Photo 2018 and beyond

Event trip

The DUESSELDORF PHOTO photo festival, which was held for the first time in February 2018, offered a platform for the most important players in the Düsseldorf photo scene as well as for nationally and internationally established artists, and was dedicated to the most diverse aspects of historical and contemporary photography for ten days.

At the invitation of the International Visitors Programme, a group of seven festival directors and curators from Ethiopia, Australia, Croatia, Palestine, Poland, Switzerland and the USA travelled to North Rhine-Westphalia.

The visitors' programme included meetings with Dr Doris Krystof, curator of contemporary art at the Kunstsammlung NRW K21, and with Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, head of the photo collection of the SK Stiftung Kultur KölnBonn, as well as a large networking meeting with journalists, gallery owners, curators and cultural professionals at the private Philara Collection in Düsseldorf. In order to gain the broadest possible insight into the Düsseldorf photography scene, the guests also got to know numerous galleries, the Museum Kunstpalast and the Polish Institute in Düsseldorf. In addition to the exhibitions in museums, galleries and collections, the guests visited the photo book salon "Duesseldorf Photo Books" at the HSD - Hochschule Düsseldorf and met its curator, Prof. Mareike Foecking.

The guests got to know Cologne actors in the field of photography, had conversations with Inga Schneider, curator and art mediator of the International Photoscene Cologne, Dr. Nobert Moos, director of the Forum for Photography, as well as Robert Danch, Düsseldorf Cologne Open Galleries, who offered a tour of some Cologne galleries.