Candida Höfer, Semper Oper Dresden. Contexts. Köln: Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, 2024. Hardcover, 88 pp with 43 color illustrations, some full- and double-page. 24.8 × 32 cm.
Catalog edited by Doreen Mende. Dresden, 2024. Contributions by Herbert Burkert, Jane Boddy, and Doreen Mende. Â
This book presents Candida Höfer’s 2023 photographs of the Semperoper Dresden in dialogue with works from the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Blending artist’s book and exhibition catalog, it explores Höfer’s practice while reflecting on the artistic representation of space. Her images of rehearsal, storage, performance, and working areas in the opera house are juxtaposed with prints and drawings from the Kupferstich-Kabinett, spanning the mid-16th century to the invention of photography, including works by Albrecht Dürer, Daniel Hopfer, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
Candida Höfer: Contexts. A Dresden Reflection
Candida Höfer: Contexts. A Dresden Reflection brought together fourteen newly created works by the internationally acclaimed German photographer at the Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden from March 22-July 21, 2024. At the artist’s own suggestion, the project focuses on the Semperoper Dresden, forming a cohesive body of work titled Semper Oper Dresden.
A Dialogue Between Past and Present
Höfer’s photographs of the opera house are shown in direct conversation with prints and drawings from the Kupferstich-Kabinett, including works by Albrecht Dürer, Daniel Hopfer, and Giovanni Battista Piranesi. The deliberate juxtaposition of contemporary photography with etchings, engravings, and woodcuts reveals the visual grammars that have shaped artistic thinking about architecture and space for centuries.
Spaces of Culture and Ritual
The book reflects on spaces of rehearsal, collecting, archiving, exhibiting, and working, places where cultural life is shaped both behind the scenes and in public view. Höfer’s photographs invite readers to see these environments not just as functional interiors but as architectural stages of cultural memory and continuity.
Höfer and the Düsseldorf School
Candida Höfer (b. 1944, Eberswalde) studied at the Düsseldorf Art Academy, where she belonged to the first generation of students taught by Bernd and Hilla Becher. Alongside her peers, she became a defining figure of postwar photography and remains a central voice in the international art world. In 2024 she received the Käthe Kollwitz Prize from the Akademie der Künste in Berlin.
Content
- Marion Ackermann, Stephanie Buck, Doreen Mende, PrefaceÂ
- Ursula Gather, Greeting
- Ulrich Reuter, Greeting
- Candida Höfer. Semper Oper Dresden
- Herbert Burkert, The Contexts of Candida Höfer
- Jane Boddy, Perspective on Stage in Albrecht Dürer and Candida Höfer
- Doreen Mende, Thinking with Images
- Kupferstich-Kabinett. Works from the Collection