The exhibition presents a unique dialogue between two outstanding photographic positions: Walter Vogel and Franziska Stünkel. Their works, separated by decades, encounter each other in a fascinating interplay of time, space and artistic perspective.

Walter Vogel, a pioneer of documentary photography, shaped the image of the second half of the 20th century with his Leica. In 2019, he was honoured for his life's work and inducted into the Leica Hall of Fame. His works bear witness to precision and a deep feeling for human beings in their environment, showing iconic moments and places.

Franziska Stünkel, multiple award-winning photographer, continues this tradition in the present with her work at national and international exhibitions. Her approach is based on her series ‘Coexist’, which has been created worldwide with the Leica for 15 years and is dedicated to the complex relationships of human interaction. She uses natural reflections on glass as a pictorial medium, which she leaves unchanged as an image of reality and does not (re)process digitally.

Franziska Stünkel approaches Walter Vogel's works in a three-dimensional dialogue that creates geographical, associative and visual connections. She follows the traces of Walter Vogel in places such as Paris, Florence and New York. Decades later, she returns there with her Leica to create new perspectives and capture the timelessness and transformation of these places. Vogel's documentary view enters into a dialogue with her own artistic visual language.

Her concept of open association, in which she brings her works together under the title ‘all the stories’, invites unexpected connections. Visual and emotional axes are created between Vogel's and Stünkel's photographs, whether through formal elements such as lines and silhouettes or thematic parallels. A Mexican mythical creature evokes associations with Vogel's communion children playing in the Ruhr area (1965), while the flowers in his Vienna Rose Gardens (1974) are continued in the floral motifs of her works or Vogel's World Trade Center (1965) enters into a dialogue through time with Stünkel's reflection at Ground Zero.

The juxtaposition of the photographs shows the change of places and societies over more than eight decades, but also emphasises the timeless: the unchanged basic emotions of human beings. The result is a poetic dialogue between the artists that permeates the dimensions of time and space.

The exhibition not only shows the work of two photographers, but also celebrates 100 years of Leica photography. It invites visitors to immerse themselves in the world of images, to build bridges between past and present and to experience the universal language of photography.

The exhibition is the first in a cycle of 12 exhibitions worldwide to mark the 100th anniversary of Leica photography.

Text by: Leica Gallery, Translated by NOA contemporary