Rainer König (photographer)

Rainer König (born August 27, 1926 in Berlin ; † October 30, 2017 there ) was a German photographer.

Life

Rainer König was born in Berlin in 1926. From 1945 he studied architecture at the University of Fine Arts (HfbK), today University of the Arts (UdK), in Berlin and began working as an architect in 1951. Since 1958 he taught exhibition construction at the master school for arts and crafts in Berlin. After taking photos for the first time in 1953, Rainer König became increasingly involved with photography and occasionally took part in exhibitions and competitions. In 1966 he finally gave up his activity as an architect in order to work as a photographer with architecture and model photography, photographic construction and documentation. Photography also became part of his teaching activities. In 1970 he was appointed professor for exhibition design and photography at the HfbK, where he taught until 1991. Since 2000, Rainer König has devoted himself primarily to editing his own picture archive, which comprises around fifty thousand photos. He also owned a collection of more than 600 historical camera lenses from 150 years.

plant

Janos Frecot writes about Rainer König's work in the catalog for the exhibition Berlinische Fragmente: “Rainer König has been taking photographs since 1953. If you look at the archive with its roughly fifty thousand images, your photographic work appears to be guided by the architect's eye both thematically and in terms of image design. The focus is on the city as a spatial construction, and this applies to the open space as well as the enclosed space: street, square, house. In the latter, he is interested in the materials: brick, plaster, wood, stone. "

“With his Berlin pictures, Rainer König documents the changes in urban space. The focus is not so much on the city as a living space, but rather as an architectural body. Numerous recordings of houses, ruins, monuments and, above all, architectural details of facade decorations, door handles, railings or stairs come together to create an inventory of the state of the city. The human being is now present here through his traces. "

In addition to the Berlin urban space, Rainer König also deals with industrial landscapes and the diverse appearances of natural forms. As Hannah Höch's nephew, shortly after her death in 1978, he also made a photographic documentation of her garden house in Heiligensee.

Exhibitions

• 2016 Documenter l´éphémère - Collection Regard in Paris - with photographs by Rainer König, Institut Goethe, Paris
• 2016 Berlinische Fragmente - photographs by Rainer König, Willy Brandt Haus, Berlin (with over 15,000 visitors)
• 2016 Salon Photographique Collection Regard - FOTOHAUS, Festival Voies-OFF, Arles
• 2015 Berlinische Fragments - Photographs by Rainer König, Collection Regard, Berlin
• 2015 Natural drawing, group exhibition, Alfred Ehrhardt Foundation, Berlin
• 2009 Glances at Hannah Höch - Photographers see the artist, exhibition together with Stefan Moses and Hans-Jörg Schütt, Gotha Castle Museum
• 2008 The house of Hannah Höch - Photography Rainer König, Heimatmuseum Reinickendorf, Berlin
• 1981 Rainer König - Documentation Altmühltal, in the exhibition series: On contemporary German photography, Photo Museum in the Münchner Stadtmuseum, Munich
• 1977 The Ludwig Canal, exhibition, New Collection, Munich

Publications

• Rainer König: Berlinische Fragments, catalog for the exhibition in the Collection Regard, Berlin 2015
• Rainer König: Hannah Höch. Das Atelier, Atelier BuchKunst of Edition Balance, Gotha / Gelbensande 2009
• Rainer König: Im Altmühltal, Bauwelt, issue 40, special edition 1985
• Rainer König: Documentation Altmühltal, catalog for the exhibition in the Fotomuseum in the Münchner Stadtmuseum, Munich 1981

Works in collections

• Berlinische Galerie, photographic collection
• Collection Regard

Web links

• Exhibition Berlin fragments
• Exhibition of natural drawing
• Article Tagesspiegel: ruins for eternity
• Article Berliner Zeitung: Berlin photographer Rainer König doesn't want to be an artist

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Janos Frecot: The Architect's Eye, in: Rainer König: Berlinische Fragmente, catalog for the exhibition in the Collection Regard, Berlin 2015, p. 5.
2. ↑ BERLINISCHE FRAGMENTS ( Memento from April 15, 2016 in the Internet Archive )