Everyone taking pictures? Photo culture and everyday images at the Jena City Museum
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Photography as a mirror of everyday life, memory, and urban society
The exhibition Everyone taking pictures? Everyday and amateur photography in Jena at the Jena City Museum offers a multifaceted view of local photo culture. From early amateur images through the photo clubs of the GDR to smartphone captures and social media, the exhibition tells how people document their surroundings, preserve memories, and connect with each other through images.
Between family album and urban history
Historical photographs from the collections of the City Museum encounter private archives, collections from photo clubs, and current works by social media photographers. In this curatorial juxtaposition, the photo is made visible not just as a document, but also as a cultural testimony. The exhibition makes it tangible how motifs, visual languages, and forms of publicness evolve over generations.
From photo clubs to the digital image world
A special focus is placed on the photo clubs of the GDR and their importance for communal learning and creative exchange. The local photo culture appears as a social practice: Photography is learned, shared, discussed, and developed further. Analog prints, private snapshots, documentary shots, and digital image practices enter into an exciting dialogue.
Artwork exploration with a cultural-historical perspective
The exhibition combines aesthetic experience with cultural education. Light, framing, materiality, and the special intimacy of private images invite a conscious contemplation of the works. At the same time, the photographs show how closely visual memory, urban identity, and social change are interconnected.
The project is linked to a scientific research and transfer project on amateur and everyday photography. Involved are, among others, the Institute for Saxon History and Folklore, the Jena City Museum, the Technical Collections Dresden, and the LWL Museum Henrichshütte. Thus, the exhibition connects art historical classification, everyday historical research, and museum communication.
Conclusion: An art experience about seeing
Visitors can expect an atmospheric journey through the history of images in Jena, where familiar photos raise new questions. Everyone taking pictures? shows photography as a memory storage, means of expression, and social link. Anyone who wants to rediscover Jena, its people, and the history of photographic seeing should definitely experience this exhibition live.
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- Website: https://www.stadtmuseum-jena.de/
