Bad Soden’s Stadtgalerie is showing photographs by Wim Wenders and his wife, Donata Wenders, in a joint exhibition. The presentation was arranged through the Taunus Art Club, founded ten years ago by Andreas and Ingrid Honneth, who have family ties to the filmmaker. Ingrid Honneth is an artist whose studio in Neuenhain also hosts readings, while the club stages an annual exhibition at the Altes Badehaus.
Donata Wenders, a trained photographer and cinematographer, met her husband while working on the 1993 film “Faraway, So Close!” She has since focused on photography. The exhibition includes her experiments with double exposures and scenes from cities including Warsaw and Havana. One black-and-white photograph shows a cleaner at the entrance to a ballet school in Havana; a sign in the image dates the scene to 1998.
Wim Wenders’s photographs often reflect his travels and can resemble sketches for his films. Many are in color. Among them is “Used Book Store,” photographed in Butte, Montana, in 2000. The 124-by-234-centimeter image depicts an empty storefront, with lettering on the window hinting at its former use. It was shown previously alongside other works by the couple at Leica in Wetzlar before moving to Bad Soden.
The exhibition also includes smaller and less frequently seen works, including a Polaroid and an early photograph titled “Glück,” taken at a fairground in Oberhausen in 1963. Andreas Honneth described the selection as “very personal.” The “Used Book Store” is available for €30,000, while smaller prints start at €1,200. Some other photographs were sent to the gallery directly from the Wenders archive in Berlin.
Sources: FAZ.