Jackie and John F. Kennedy expecting Hassan II. of Morocco, Washington 1963
Münchner Stadtmuseum St.-Jakobs-Platz 1 . D-80331 Munich Allemagne
The approximately 140 items showcased in the exhibition 'Max Scheler – From Konrad A. to Jackie O. – Pictures from Germany, China, and the USA' represent the first large cross-section of the works of this prominent photojournalist.
Max Scheler was a post-war photographer of international renown, a junior member of the MAGNUM agency and, since 1959, one of the premier photo contributors to the magazine Stern. In 1975, after retiring from his career as photographer, he assumed the position of photo editor for the newly founded magazine GEO.
As a student of Herbert List, Scheler embarks on his career in the Germany of the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle) in the 1950s. As part of his political reporting, he covered the Quemoy crisis in China and Taiwan and Mao Zedong’s cultural revolution of the 1960s. During the 1950s and 1960s, Max Scheler also repeatedly traveled throughout the USA and reported on the country, its people and political life for both Münchner Illustrierte and Stern magazines.
Scheler’s main topics are 'human interest' - human behavior, joy and sorrow, elation and despair. He chooses his topics with the desire to chronicle significant events, observing people from a variety of cultures during every-day activities, in times of crises and wars, social problems and festivities. In extensive reports, he creates human images full of emotional depth, occasionally following up several times.
Funny and bizarre, then again serious and dramatic, sometimes documentation and sometimes commentary, Max Scheler’s multi-layered images depict historical events and personalities but also every-day occurrences from the world in which we live.
The works on display can be separated into three physical locations: Germany, China and the USA. Whereas the pictures of Germany comment on the 'economic miracle', the political beginnings of the federal republic and the division of Germany, the images from China report on crises, ideological upheaval and cultural alienation. Max Scheler’s creations portray the USA as a multi-faceted and contradictory phenomenon: highly developed yet provincial; democratic- progressive yet racist and unjust. Images of the United States that also report on the discontinuities in a great nation.
The Münchner Stadtmuseum – Photography Collection presents this exhibition in cooperation with the Deichtorhallen gallery in Hamburg.