Staging the Self

In the space of a single decade, the so-called "Golden Twenties", photographer Marta Astfalck-Vietz (1901–1994) created a glittering corpus of portrait, nude and dance photography and conceptual series. Idiosyncratic enactments reveal her interest in self-invention. For these she not only took the pictures, but also arranged the setting, directed and posed. Astfalck-Vietz slips here into a range of characters, challenges female stereotypes, alludes critically to social transformations of the period and in so doing anticipates visual strategies of the 1970s.

Playing with fabric and texture, Marta Astfalck-Vietz generates an almost haptic quality in her work. The innovative images composed under shared copyright with photographer Heinz Hajek-Halke (1898–1983) achieve dreamy, often surreal effects by experimenting with techniques like distortion, double exposure and shadow play.

This substantial solo exhibition with accompanying catalogue (German/English) features about 140 works to celebrate the bold and multi-faceted œuvre of Marta Astfalck-Vietz. Her estate, held by the Berlinische Galerie since 1991, was digitised and in part restored in 2022/2023 under a programme established by the Land of Berlin for the digitisation of cultural assets.