Vera Lutter

Vera Lutter

Vera Lutter - Galerie Max Hetzler
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Vera Lutter is well-known for her unique photographs representing scenes of architecture, transportation and industry created with one of the earliest photographic devices: the camera obscura. When the image is developed – after an exposure process of several hours, days or weeks - it is a black and white negative assuming precise yet mirage-like perspectives. By showing familiar venues like Venetian architecture, urban sites of Manhattan or  Egypt's great pyramids, the images are immediately recognizable but the inversion of tones and the passage of time captured induce uncanny presences that invite a closer observation.

"Devoid of a lens, the pinhole of the camera obscura - the aperture - permits a direct imprint of the subject it confronts. By retaining the negative rather than reprinting to create a positive image Lutter adheres as closely as possible to the original activity of light tracing form on photo-sensitive paper. This, in turn, means that concrete elements seem but echoes of themselves, faint traces of what would appear in a conventional print to be substantive in mass as well as in volume. Normally regarded as factual and objective, the trompe l’oeil illusionism that is emblematic of the documentary is undermined, to varying degrees, in her work by effects of the fleeting and evanescent that may at times verge on the eerie or the uncanny. By utilizing photosensitive paper in the largest dimensions available, she produces images imbued with a monumental scale, grandeur and gravitas akin to that associated with the subject matter itself. Invested with a quasi architectural dimension, her unique prints have few parallels in the history of photography."

Lynne Cooke, Vera Lutter: Time after Time in Vera Lutter: Inside Out, Kunsthaus Graz, 2004

Image: Cold Spring XI: March 27, 2014, 2014, unique fiber based silver gelatin print, mounted on museum board and framed behind plexi glass, 1 panel, 197,5 x 141,5 cm

Solo Exhibitions

Vera Lutter - Galerie Max Hetzler

Vera Lutter

Goethestraße 2/3, Berlin

14 June – 26 July 2014
Vera Lutter - Galerie Max Hetzler

Vera Lutter

Weidingen / Eifel

30/31 July 2011
Vera Lutter - Galerie Max Hetzler

Vera Lutter

Zimmerstraße 90/91, Berlin-Mitte

5 September – 18 October 2008
Vera Lutter - Galerie Max Hetzler

Vera Lutter

Zimmerstraße 90/91, Berlin-Mitte, May 15 – June 26, 2004

Holzmarktstraße 15-18, Berlin-Mitte

15 May – 26 June 2004
Vera Lutter - Galerie Max Hetzler

Vera Lutter

Zimmerstraße 90/91, Berlin-Mitte

2 March – 6 April 2002

Group Exhibitions

REMEMBER EVERYTHING - Galerie Max Hetzler

REMEMBER EVERYTHING

40 Years Galerie Max Hetzler
Darren Almond, Glenn Brown, André Butzer, Rineke Dijkstra, Günther Förg, Mona Hatoum, Jeff Koons, Vera Lutter, Marepe, Beatriz Milhazes, Ernesto Neto, Frank Nitsche, Albert Oehlen, Yves Oppenheim, Richard Phillips, Michael Raedecker, Bridget Riley, Thomas Struth, Rebecca Warren, Christopher Wool, Toby Ziegler
(catalogue)

Oudenarder Straße 16-20, Berlin-Wedding

10 November – 21 December 2013
Carbonic Anhydride - Galerie Max Hetzler

Carbonic Anhydride

Haluk Akakçe, Darren Almond, Shannon Bool, André Butzer, Terry Haggerty, Mona Hatoum, Arturo Herrera, Ulrich Lamsfuß, Won Ju Lim, Vera Lutter, Marepe, Sarah Morris, Ernesto Neto, Frank Nitsche, Yves Oppenheim, Thomas Struth, Kara Walker (catalogue)

Oudenarder Straße 16-20, Berlin-Wedding

28 September – 11 November 2006

Selected Institutional Exhibitions

Vera Lutter

Inverted Worlds

Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

21 November 2015 – 20 March 2016

Biography

Show Vita
Show Selected Bibliography

Publications

REMEMBER EVERYTHING - Galerie Max Hetzler

REMEMBER EVERYTHING

Darren Almond, Glenn Brown, André Butzer, Rineke Dijkstra, Günther Förg, Mona Hatoum, Jeff Koons, Vera Lutter, Marepe, Beatriz Milhazes, Ernesto Neto, Frank Nitsche, Albert Oehlen, Yves Oppenheim, Richard Phillips, Michael Raedecker, Bridget Riley, Thomas Struth, Rebecca Warren, Christopher Wool, Toby Ziegler

Galerie Max Hetzler / Holzwarth Publications / Ridinghouse, Berlin and London 2014
With texts by Julie Sylvester and Jean-Marie Gallais
Edited by Jean-Marie Gallais

€ 45.00

Leaf through book
Carbonic Anhydride - Galerie Max Hetzler

Carbonic Anhydride

Haluk Akakçe, Darren Almond, Shannon Bool, André Butzer, Terry Haggerty, Mona Hatoum, Arturo Herrera, Ulrich Lamsfuß, Won Ju Lim, Vera Lutter, Marepe, Sarah Morris, Ernesto Neto, Frank Nitsche, Yves Oppenheim, Thomas Struth, Kara Walker

Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin 2006

€ 35.00

Light in Transit - Galerie Max Hetzler

Light in Transit

Vera Lutter

Galerie Max Hetzler / Holzwarth Publications, Berlin 2002
With texts by Gertrud Sandqvist and Vera Lutter (German / English)

Selected Press

Die Zeit 2013

Berliner Zeitung 2008

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung 2008

News

Vera Lutter

Museum in the Camera (solo show)
Resnick Pavilion, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles
29 March – 19 July 2020

From February 2017 to January 2019, New York-based artist Vera Lutter was invited by LACMA to work in residence at the museum, creating a new body of work examining the campus architecture, galleries, and collection holdings. "Vera Lutter: Museum in the Camera" features the compelling photographs ...
Vera Lutter

Vera Lutter, Thomas Struth et al.

Civilization: The Way We Live (group show)
Mucem, Marseille
19 January – 24 May 2021

Civilization: The Way We Live Now is an international photography exhibition of monumental scale, featuring the work of over 100 contemporary photographers from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe with over 200 original photographs being exhibited.
In this increasingly globalised ...
Vera Lutter, Thomas Struth

Vera Lutter, Thomas Struth et al.

Civilization: The Way We Live Now (group show)
National Gallery of Victoria (NGV), Melbourne
13 September 2019 - 2 February 2020

Civilization: The Way We Live Now is an international photography exhibition of monumental scale, featuring the work of over 100 contemporary photographers from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Australia and Europe with over 200 original photographs being exhibited.
In this increasingly globalised ...
Vera Lutter, Thomas Struth