Reinhard Matz

Reinhard Matz in early 2014

Reinhard Matz (born January 2, 1952 in Bremen ) is a German photographer, author and publicist. He was a research assistant at various cultural institutions, had solo and group exhibitions at home and abroad and published various photo books with different thematic focuses.

Career

Matz grew up in Bremen and completed an apprenticeship in photography at the Lette-Verein in Berlin after graduating from high school in 1970 . He then studied philosophy, German language and literature and media studies at the Free University of Berlin and the University of Cologne until 1980 with a master's degree. At the same time he studied artistic photography at the Cologne University of Applied Sciences from 1976 to 1984 .

Since 1972 Matz has been working as a freelance photographer and doing commissioned work. In 1973 he took part in his first group exhibition, the 3rd Free Berlin Art Exhibition ; In 1979 he exhibited his work under the title Civilized Landscapes in Cologne and Mönchengladbach.

Since 1979 Matz has worked for various domestic and foreign photography magazines and daily newspapers, including European Photography in Göttingen, Camera Austria in Graz and “ Photonews ” in Hamburg. He published his first book, Our Landscapes , in 1980 together with Martin Manz at DuMont Buchverlag in Cologne.

Several photo and exhibition projects and publications followed in the 1980s, including industrial photography for the Museum Folkwang's photographic collection and The Invisible Camps. The disappearance of the past in memory, for which Matz made a photographic inventory of the memorials of former National Socialist concentration and extermination camps. In cooperation with the WDR, the film Die terrible museums was created in 1991 about this project .

In the years 1988 to 1993 Matz accepted teaching positions for photo engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, and in the following two years for design at the University of Wuppertal . From 1992 to 2012 he was a permanent freelance photographer for Cologne Cathedral Administration .

For the competition for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, he and Rudolf Herz submitted a first draft in 1995 under the title Empty Place, with which the artists achieved 9th place. In 1997 they were invited to submit a second draft, which they named Overwritten . In the middle of Germany, on the A 7 south of Kassel, a section of the autobahn one kilometer in length would be cobblestoned, the speed reduced to 30 km / h and a bridge of signs at the beginning and end bearing the inscription "Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe" carries. The plot of land in Berlin intended for the memorial was to be sold and the proceeds to finance a foundation to support persecuted minorities.

For the exhibition and book publication Façade.Köln , Matz collected exterior views of buildings of the more provincial kind in the city of Cologne, which presented the city as "aesthetically resistant and almost postmodern-free", as a "grandiose example of a still Ash Wednesday". The book was awarded the German Photo Book Prize in 2005 in the photo book category and in 2006 was supplemented by a text volume with contributions from various authors, including Katrin Askan , Roland Koch , Heinrich Pachl and Georg Quander .

Together with Andreas Schwarting, Matz worked from 2007 to 2011 on an exhibition and book project on the Bauhaus settlement in Dessau-Törten designed by Walter Gropius .

24 sentences of 8 minutes on the fence of the archive collapse site, 2014

As part of the Cologne-based ArchivKomplex initiative , which after the collapse of the Historical Archive, artistically and politically dealt with the accident and its consequences, in 2012 he told the story of the collapse site with small information boards - 24 sentences [s] of 8 minutes - along the fence around the collapse site "Lochs".

Reinhard Matz's works have been purchased for the photographic collections of numerous museums and cultural institutions, including the Museum for Art and Industry Hamburg , the Jewish and German Historical Museums in Berlin, the Berlinische Galerie, the Folkwang Museum in Essen and the Munich Photo Museum, the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona and the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography .

Matz has a daughter; he lives and works in Cologne and Berlin.

Publications (selection)

with Martin Manz: Our landscapes. DuMont Buchverlag , Cologne 1980, ISBN 3-7701-1225-3 .
Industrial photography. From company archives in the Ruhr area. (Museum Folkwang / series of publications by the Kulturstiftung Ruhr, Volume 2), Essen 1987.
with Bodo von Dewitz (Ed.): Silber und Salz. During the early days of photography in the German-speaking world (1839–1870). Agfa Foto-Historama / Edition Braus, Cologne / Heidelberg 1989, ISBN 3-925835-65-2 .
Rooms or The Museum Age. DuMont Buchverlag , Cologne 1990, ISBN 3-7701-2557-6 .
The invisible camp. The disappearance of the past in memory. (Series of publications by the office for the preparation of the Frankfurt Learning and Documentation Center for the Holocaust, Volume 6). Rowohlt, Reinbek near Hamburg 1993, ISBN 3-499-19388-4 .
Playful. Photographs for children. In memory of Edward Steichen's The First Picture Book. Edition Braus, Heidelberg 2000, ISBN 3-926318-71-6 .
Façade, Cologne. Photographs. Emons Verlag , Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-89705-380-2 .
Façade, Cologne. Texts. Emons Verlag , Cologne 2006, ISBN 3-89705-429-9 .
with Andreas Schwarting: The Disappearance of the Revolution in Renovation. The history of the Gropius settlement Dessau-Törten (1926–2011). Gebr. Mann Verlag, Berlin 2011, ISBN 3-7861-2646-1 .
with Wolfgang Vollmer: Cologne before the war. Life-Culture-City (1880-1940). Greven Verlag, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-7743-0482-6 .
with Wolfgang Vollmer: Cologne after the war. Life-Culture-City (1950–1990). Greven Verlag, Cologne 2014, ISBN 978-3-7743-0628-8 .
August Sanders 'Cologne as it was' - a revision . Greven Verlag, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-7743-0666-0 .
with Wolfgang Vollmer: Cologne and the war. Life-Culture-City (1940–1950). Greven Verlag, Cologne 2016, ISBN 978-3-7743-0667-7 .
Understand photographs . (Series of publications by Alligator. Art and Science eV) ed. by Bernd Stiegler, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne 2017, ISBN 978-3-86335-990-4 .

with Steffen Siegel and Bernd Stiegler (eds.): Wolfgang Schulz and the photo scene around 1980. Spector Books, Leipzig 2019, ISBN 978-3-95905-282-5 .

Solo exhibitions (selection)

1979: Civilized Landscapes, Mönchengladbach producers' gallery; Glasherz photo gallery, Cologne
1985: George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film, Rochester, New York
1990: Rooms or The Museum Age , Agfa Photo Historama in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum / Museum Ludwig , Cologne; Scheune cultural center , Dresden ; City Museum State Capital Düsseldorf

1993 ff: The invisible camps, traveling exhibition of the Fritz Bauer Institute , stations: Frankfurt; Oranienburg, Hamburg, Hohenems (Austria), Weimar, Munich, Leipzig, Göttingen, Vaihingen / Enz, Hambacher Schloß, Innsbruck, Siegen, Nuremberg, Berlin, Graz, Rotterdam, Cologne, Hanover, Bergheim, Bergisch Gladbach

1998 ff: people, angels, monsters - 750 years of Cologne Cathedral. (with Axel Schenk), Domforum Köln, traveling exhibition of the Goethe-Institut for the cathedral anniversary; Stations u. a. Tokyo, Kyoto, Beijing, five stations in Great Britain, Sidney and Turin

2000: Playful. Photographs for children, Museum for Art and Industry Hamburg; Bread Factory Berlin

2005 ff: Façade, Cologne. Forum for Photography, Cologne; Goethe-Institut Madrid, San Sebastian, Guernica cultural center

2011: The disappearance of the revolution in renovation. The history of the Gropius settlement Dessau-Törten, Meisterhaus Muche, Dessau

2019: Wolfgang Schulz and the photo scene around 1980, Museum of Art and Industry Hamburg, 2020 Museum of Photography, Berlin

Web links

Individual evidence

personal data
SURNAME	Matz, Reinhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German photographer, author and publicist
DATE OF BIRTH	2nd January 1952
PLACE OF BIRTH	Bremen