MENSCHENBILDER | ZEITGESCHICHTE. Der Fotograf Joachim Giesel.

In the organizer's words:

For over fifty years, the Hanover-based photojournalist, freelance author and commercial advertising photographer Joachim Giesel (*1940 in Breslau) has been capturing social, political, economic and cultural developments in the Federal Republic of Germany in his documentaries, series, portraits and advertising photographs. In their historical caesuras and social transformations. In its prosperity and its stuffiness. In its beauty and diversity. And the focus is always on people. Giesel was present at the funeral of Benno Ohnesorg in 1967 and at the legendary soccer match between the GDR and Brazil in 1974, he created a gallery of chancellors from Adenauer to Kohl, photographed a series of mentally ill people, documented the German-German border and staged portraits of everyone from Louis Armstrong to Rudolf Augstein. In the tradition of August Sander, his contemporary documents offer cross-generational insights into West German society between single-family homes and prefabricated housing, between assembly line workers and drag queens, between Swan Lake and nudism. At the same time, Giesel's images of people fascinate with their specific aesthetics and technical brilliance and make the photographer an important figure in the history of German photography after 1945.

Giesel is involved in various functions as a curator, teacher, publicist and functionary for the dissemination of photography in the Federal Republic and has taken part in over 50 exhibitions in Germany and abroad. In 1972, together with photographer friends, he founded the spectrum Photogalerie in Hanover, one of the first photo galleries in Europe, which staged almost 100 exhibitions. Since 2022, his work has been scientifically researched in the Joachim Giesel Archive in Leipzig.

At the MÄDLER ART FORUM in Leipzig, Giesel's oeuvre will be presented for the first time in its thematic and aesthetic diversity, analyzed against the backdrop of current discourses and contextualized with a comparative view of East Germany.

Curator-guided tours through the exhibition "MENSCHENBILDER | ZEITGESCHICHTE. The photographer Joachim Giesel".