Angelika Platen's art of taking portraits demonstrates her ability to depict the essence of an artist in connection with their body of work in one single picture.
Angelika Platen's oeuvre comprises hundreds of portraits of artists. During her first creative period from 1968 to 1975 she took photos of Georg Baselitz, Joseph Beuys, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Hanne Darboven, Walter de Maria, Blinky Palermo, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Günther Uecker, and Andy Warhol.
From 1997 onwards she photographed Marina Abramović, John Armleder, Christian Boltanski, Jeff Koons, Neo Rauch, Julian Rosefeldt, Monica Bonvicini, Thomas Struth, and many more. In the 1990s she started to focus especially on female artists.
Angelika Platen (*1942 in Heidelberg) began to work as a photographer and photojournalist in 1968. She presented her first portraits in an exhibition titled "Artists are just Humans too" in 1969. During her time as manager of Gunter Sachs's gallery in Hamburg (1972-1975) she took hundreds of portraits of young artists who were only at the beginning of their career, some of whom are world-famous today. She took photographs of painters, sculptors, conceptual artists, and found object artists in their own creative environment. In the late 1970s the photographer moved to Paris, where she worked as head of advertising and communications in industrial companies.
In 1997 she resumed her photographic career and started taking portraits of new, but also aged and renowned artists again. Platen's oeuvre is well-documented in various photography books and has been exhibited in numerous museums. Platen lives in Berlin.
Curated by Wiebke Ratzeburg
Opening: Saturday, 25 January 2025, 7pm
Livestream on Stadthaus Ulm – YouTube