VietNamNet Bridge – The German photographer and artist Ulrike Ottinger will exhibit a representative selection of her works on portraits, everyday life scenes, architecture and travel photographs at Hanoi Goethe Institute on January 11.

German photographer, movie director and artist Ulrike Ottinger - Photo: Courtesy of organizers

Ottinger is regarded as one of the most self-willed German filmmakers of international stature. Her oeuvre spans from the surreal theatrical and stylized artificiality through ethnological portrayals; from the fictional to the documentary.

She finds her motives in Europe, Asia and North America. This exhibition centers on her large-format photographs which often correspond to the film works, but still put their very own visual accents. Regional focal points include China and Mongolia, which Ottinger has visited repeatedly.

In the center of her images are the outlandish, offbeat and grotesque of those places. The construction of images often arranged very strictly, contrasting bright colors and unusual style of productions, triggers fear and joy at the same time.

Ottinger was born in Konstanz in 1942. She lived in Paris from 1961 to 1969 as a painter and photographer, where she also wrote her first film script “Die mongolische Doppelschublade.” She returned to Germany in 1969, where she founded the film club Visuell in cooperation with a film seminar at the Universitat Konstanz. She directed the club until 1972.

She has lived in Berlin since 1973 and works also as a film writer and as a director of plays and opera.

Both her films and her photographic work have been shown in numerous retrospectives and exhibitions, including at Venice Biennale (1980), at Cinematheque française, Paris (1980, 1982), at Museum of Modern Art, New York (2000, 2004), and Kunst-Werke Berlin (2001).

The exhibition will run until January 31 at the institute, 56-58 Nguyen Thai Hoc Street in Hanoi.

Source: SGT