Anselm Kiefer: Punctum

Photography has been an important but underrecognized aspect of Anselm Kiefer’s practice since 1968, when he began using his father’s 35mm camera. The medium underpins the evolution of the artist’s paintings and is a key component of his books. Punctum offers new perspectives on Kiefer’s exploration of materials and processes, and on the symbolic and expressive potentials of photography. Returning to perennial motifs and images, the photographs on view reinforce the continuity of themes such as ruin and destruction, and growth and renewal, across Kiefer’s oeuvre, with subjects ranging from sunflowers and snow-covered fields to dense cityscapes. Kiefer often manipulates his photographs through techniques such as solarization and the application of metals and other materials that transform them physically and metaphorically.