ONUK Bernhard Schmitt's photographs take us to the great metropolises of the world, they place us at the center of photography and suddenly we find ourselves in a rush of faces, objects and moving elements. In addition to the sitting guests of an underground in Shanghai or pedestrians in London or Venice, transience also plays an important role in the photographs.

Space is just as important as (accelerated) time in ONUK's work. He traveled all over the world and photographed the most famous cities, but there are no recognizable elements of these places in his pictures. Neither Big Ben in London, nor St Mark's Cathedral in Venice, but the residents and their daily activities are in the focus of his pictures. In this sense, the space captured by ONUK speaks simultaneously of global and local space; it reflects our globalized world, in which one sees the metropolis, but at the same time cannot recognize it.

The global-local context has accompanied ONUK throughout his career. He not only carried out photographic projects in Europe and Asia, he also worked for numerous media in Karlsruhe and photographed for the ZKM and KAMUNA (Karlsruhe Museum Night) for many years. Together with a selection of his photographs from all over the world, the exhibition will present an overview of KAMUNA events of the last twenty years.

Credits

• Blanca Giménez (Curator)

Organization / Institution

ZKM | Center for Art and Media