This page gathers photographers connected to Germany and traces how each links to a period and movement in the history of photography.
Born in New York in 1865, Frank Eugene studied painting in Munich and gradually turned photography, which he first used as an aid in making painted portraits, into an …
Hungarian-born artist and educator who, through Bauhaus teaching and photogram experiments, conceived of photography as an apparatus for renewing perception rather than …
Portrait photographer known for People of the Twentieth Century, a systematic documentation of German society across occupations, classes and regions. His method of converting …
Renger-Patzsch made the photographed object itself central, rejecting both pictorialist beautification and Bauhaus-style visual experiment in favor of precise structural …
German-born photographer known for the photobook Métal, which edits industrial structures through fragmentation and diagonals. She moved across avant-garde practice, photobooks …
Born in Berlin in 1886, Erich Salomon used the compact Ermanox camera and available interior light from the late 1920s onward to photograph courtrooms, international …
Born in Gotha, Germany, in 1889, Hannah Höch was a Berlin Dada artist who cut photographs from newspapers, magazines, and advertisements and reassembled bodies, machines, words …
Karl Blossfeldt, born in 1865 in Schielo in the Harz region of the Kingdom of Prussia, was a design educator and photographer who enlarged plant buds, stems, seed heads, and …
Born in Düsseldorf, Germany, in 1902, Umbo (Otto Umbehr) studied at the Bauhaus in Weimar from 1921 with Johannes Itten and others, then began photographing after moving to …
Born in Schmargendorf near Berlin in 1891, John Heartfield cut and recombined press photographs, portraits of politicians, and advertising text into political photomontages …
Born in 1898 in Dirschau, West Prussia, then part of the German Empire (now Tczew, Poland), Alfred Eisenstaedt used a 35mm camera and available light to photograph politicians …
Born in Stuttgart in 1910, Gerda Taro left Germany after the Nazis came to power, collaborated with Robert Capa in Paris, and then photographed the Spanish Civil War from the …
Born in 1899 in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Ilse Bing began photographing architecture for her doctoral research in art history and went on to use a Leica for Paris streets …
Born in Berlin, Germany, in 1897, Erwin Blumenfeld moved from Dada collage into nudes, portraiture, fashion, and color photography while working in Amsterdam, Paris, and New …
Helmut Newton (1920–2004) was born in Berlin, Germany. Beginning in 1936, he apprenticed in the studio of fashion photographer Yva. He left Germany in 1938 to escape persecution …
Katharina Sieverding (1941–), born in Prague, is a German artist based in Düsseldorf and Berlin. From Eigenbewegung in the late 1960s, she developed works such as …
Michael Schmidt (1945–2014) was a German photographer born in Berlin. In his Berlin series of the 1970s, he photographed neighborhoods in muted gray tones; in Waffenruhe, walls …
German photographer, born in 1958 in Moers and based in Hamburg; originally trained as a biologist. Historical significance: he is significant because he redefined nature …
Hans-Peter Feldmann (1941–2023) was an artist born in Düsseldorf, Germany. From the late 1960s, he collected press photographs, postcards, and personal pictures, making the …
Andreas Gursky moved from early photographs of people at ski resorts and riverbanks to ports, stock exchanges, discount stores, apartment blocks, and factories. From distant …
They photographed water towers and blast furnaces endlessly under identical conditions, then arranged the results in grids. They opened up a use for photography that is not …
Thomas Ruff moved from Porträts—photographs of friends made under standardized conditions and enlarged to roughly two meters high—to astronomical negatives, press photographs …
Rut Blees Luxemburg moved from political science into photography and, in 1990s London, used a 4 × 5-inch camera and long exposures to photograph housing estates, underpasses …
German photographer born in 1970 in Mainz.*1*2 Known for large-scale constructed photographs of landscapes and cityscapes assembled from numerous image fragments into scenes …
Michael Janiszewski combined masks, costumes, religious symbols, and everyday objects with actors and life-size cloth figures in private actions staged only for the camera. He …
German photographer born in 1973 in Stuttgart, later based between Los Angeles and Cologne.*1*2*3 Known for landscape and urban photographs that combine traditional photographic …
Peter Piller is a German artist who collects existing photographs from local newspapers, aerial surveys, insurance records, and other sources, then rereads them through his own …
German photographer born in 1962.*1*2*3 Known for projects on architecture, the urban environment, and later portraiture, often using photography to test abstraction, power …
Michael Wesely is a German photographer known for extreme long exposures of sites including Potsdamer Platz after German reunification, the renovation of MoMA, and public spaces …
Swiss/German photographer who has lived and worked across Zürich, Paris, London, New York, Los Angeles, and Austin.*1*2 Known for editorial, celebrity, and autobiographical …
Ricarda Roggan seeks out disused furniture, cars, machines, and empty rooms, alters the physical setting, and photographs it with a large-format analog camera. Her use of …
Sibylle Bergemann (1941–2010) was born in Berlin. A student of Arno Fischer, she photographed fashion, portraits, and the city, principally for the East German cultural magazine …
German photographer, born in 1962, associated with the Düsseldorf / Becher-school context while developing a distinct body of large-format color landscape work. Historical …
Thomas Demand (born in Germany in 1964) works with realities that have already been framed through someone else’s viewpoint—news photographs, documentary images, personal …
Wolfgang Tillmans is a contemporary artist whose work moves across magazines, clubs, exhibition spaces, publishing, and political messaging—treating photography not as a single …
German photographer born in 1951, associated with the Düsseldorf School. Known for large-scale color photographs of landscape, architecture, interiors, and nocturnal or …
Sonja Braas presents actual landscapes, artificial zoo environments, natural-history dioramas, and handmade models of waves, avalanches, and forest fires as the same kind of …
German photographer and visual artist born in 1963, working with photography, video, text, and research-based projects. In photographic history, Einsele is most relevant for …
OHIO is a German photomagazine and art project that treats publication as an exhibition space, reframing everyday and reproducible photographs through editing, sequencing, and …
German-Brazilian artist born in 1973, working across photography, video, performance, sculpture, drawing, and painting. In a photography-history context, Tschäpe is relevant for …
German artist born in 1972, working with photography, sculpture, collage, and installation. His practice often revisits existing images and cultural forms through repetition …
Thomas Struth is a German photographer whose subjects have ranged from unpeopled city streets and family portraits to museum visitors, tropical rainforests, and scientific and …
German artist and photographer, born in 1964. Historical significance: she is significant because she made photographic multiplicity itself into the subject of art. Her work …
Natalie Czech makes Hidden Poems by finding sequences of words in magazines, newspapers, record covers, and product packaging that match existing poems, marking them with …
Sources — museums, archives, and specialist literature (listed individually in § SRC on this page)
Text written by — AI
Structure & editing — the editor of Photo Coordinates
Source gathering and the writing of the text are done by AI; the structure and editing are handled by the site’s editor. Factual details are given a final check by the editor using AI, but errors may remain. If you need accuracy, please consult the primary sources listed in § SRC on each page.