For his photographs and films, the Dutch photographer Erwin Olaf creates a world that has been staged down to its smallest detail. It seems very similar to ours, but its artificiality give it an enigmatic sense. Still, with their visuals borrowed from the film and advertising industries, the works are only flawlessly striking on the surface; in fact, they deal with questions of democracy, equality, or self-determination. Marking Olaf's first comprehensive solo exhibition in Germany, the companion publication deals with essential aspects of Olaf's art and offers an attractive survey of his multifaceted oeuvre from the past forty years. Olaf's most recent works, some of which were created especially for the exhibition at the Kunsthalle Munich, will also be shown.

Catalogus met werk van de fotograaf Erwin Olaf (1959).

Erwin Olaf's approach to storytelling is uniquely evocative and enticingly ambiguous. Critic Francis Hodgson writes of Olaf's images, "They lead us to a "Stimmung" (a sense of atmosphere) which is broad enough to repay many second readings of the pictures and so keep us viewers interested." In this presentation of his most recent work, Olaf expands on his established, highly polished and stylized color studio images to include a series drawn from his sculptural video installation, "Keyholes"; a group of black-and-white images he has exhibited as carbon prints; and photographs created on location in Berlin--a departure from the constructed mises-en-scène of earlier work produced in his Amsterdam studio. "Erwin Olaf: Volume II" showcases the artist at the height of his powers, as an artisan of atmosphere and a craftsman who uses high polish to both perverse and seductive effect. Erwin Olaf (born 1959) is a Dutch photographer known for his highly stylized, daring and often provocative work addressing social issues and taboos. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Johannes Vermeer Award (2011), a Lucie Award (2008) and Photographer of the Year in the International Color Awards (2006). His work is shown in museums and galleries around the world. Olaf also received a commission to design the new national side of the Dutch Euro, launched in 2013.

Mark Mahaney's Polar Night is a passage through a rapidly changing landscape in Alaska's northernmost town of Utqiagvik. It's an exploration of prolonged darkness, told through the strange beauty of a snowscape cast in a two month shadow. The unnatural lights that flare in the sun's absence and the shapes that emerge from the landscape are unexpectedly beautiful in their softness and harshness. It's hard to see past the heavy gaze of climate change in an arctic town, though Polar Night is a visual poem about endurance, isolation and survival.

Frank Horvat (*1928 in Abbazia, today Opatija, Croatia), a pioneering fashion photographer and one of the first professional photographers to use Photoshop, can meanwhile look back at around seventy years of activity and a dazzling career. The grand seigneur now allows us very personal insight into his private life: the autobiography in pictures reveals personal moments from all phases of his life. We encounter the great themes of humankind, such as birth and death, are witness to his ability to play, and to handle animals, we see his family, his friends. They are everyday images like anyone could have assembled in an album. However, there is one slight difference: a master was clearly at work here early on, the quality of the photographs speaks for itself. In the appendix, Horvat comments, in most cases at length, on each of the chronologically ordered pictures.