Berlin will host Germany’s largest photography festival from 16 October to 16 November 2014. Member of the European Month of Photography network and curator for this 6th edition, Frank Wagner evokes his program and shares his vision of the photography market with The Eyes.
Could you give us a brief outline of your background?
An art historian and free-lance curator in Berlin for 30 years now, I have studied art history, literature and philosophy. In the last 15 years, I have organized large retrospectives of artists working with photography like Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Valie Export or Alfredo Jaar.
Are you interested in the issue of mutation in society?
Yes, I was always interested in critical art, and photography is a very important medium that operates very close to politics and critical culture. I think there is a strong interrelation between identity politics and photography.
There was at one point a real separation between photography and the contemporary art market. It now seems that these two worlds are interacting more than ever.
How do you feel about this as the curator of the largest photography festival in Germany?
It now seems that artists who use photography as much as photographers are innovating in photography. That’s my starting point. I see the gap between the art scene and the photography scene as substantially narrowing, because photography is not only a special medium in art, it is also a very popular one. Photography is now strongly anchored in our contemporary societies.
How many exhibitions are involved in the program of the 6th European Month of Photography Berlin?
We are presenting 130 exhibitions during the Month of Photography. “Upheavals and Utopias – The Other Europe” is the common thread structuring this big flow of exhibitions. Approximately 116 institutions are participating, including the Martin-Gropius-Bau with the exhibition of the Month of Photography, which I curated under the title, MemoryLab: The Sentimental Turn, Photography Challenges History.
Extract of the interview of Franck Wagner, Director of Month of Photography in Berlin
