GEMEINSAM, photographs by Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler

The exhibition "Together" by renowned photographer couple Ute and Wernern Mahler opened last Friday in the foyer of the Freiheitshalle Hof to great acclaim. The path to this high-caliber exhibition began with a brief conversation with Peter Nürmberger, Head of the Cultural Office, who met the couple when they were awarded the German Photographic Society's 2023 Culture Prize.

The exhibition ranges from "Where the World Ended" to the "Monalises of the Suburbs" taken around the world with an analog plate camera in Florence, Minsk, Berlin and Hof. The artist couple's first joint group of works will also be on display. "The title 'Together' is also the program. You can see works that were created together, whereas for many decades each of them actually worked independently," says Mayor Eva Döhla. The Mahlers' subtle feeling for people, for history and for the invisible behind the visible can be heard in all the pictures. Her works are an impressive testimony to German photographic art, linking East and West as well as fashion and humanity, past and present.

"An upturned aquarium in a park, a dead deer in flood water, backlights in an abandoned hangar for fighter planes, an overgrown carpet. What we rational people ignore, what appears to us as garbage, superfluous or ugly, becomes poetry in these pictures and moves us. Allow yourself to get a little involved," said Peter Nürmberger, head of the cultural department, at the opening of the exhibition.

The Mahler couple were present at the event and expressed their thanks: "We've never had so much space at an exhibition before. It's impressive how well Peter Nürmberger has understood and staged our photographs."