A young black woman is standing in front of an English clinker wall. She wears loose pants to the pink bomber jacket. Under her black hat peek black-purple pigtails. Her eyes are proud, stern, lurking. She stares into, through. Hits the mark.

The touching portrait is part of the series "Brixton" (2002) by the photo artist Jitka Hanzlová. It hangs in the Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, which, in cooperation with the Museum für Photographie Braunschweig, dedicates a two-part overview exhibition to the photographer Hanzlová for her 60th birthday: "Between Continuum" shows photographic and cinematic works that Hanzlová has created since 1990 and of which some of them were already on display in Hamburg's Deichtorhallen, the MoMA or the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

Jitka Hanzlová, born in 1958 in Nachód in the former Czechoslovakia, fled to the Federal Republic as a 24-year-old - without a family. In exile, she lived with "recollection and language set aside, only on one leg - losing her balance, drawing all hope from the future," she says. From 1987 she studied visual communication and photography at the Essen Folkwang University. In 1990, after the opening of the Iron Curtain, she met her family again and created her first major work "Rokytník", which depicts the still socialistic life in her home village.

Memories of bygone times

Selected motifs from "Rokytník" can now be seen in the Museum of Photography Braunschweig, which is located in two historic gatehouses. The small-format, pale color photos of people, animals and nature fill a room in the 1st gatehouse and testify, slightly melancholic, of bygone times.

There is also a treasure to admire: the film that complements the "Rokytník" photos, which Hanzlová also shot in her homeland in 1994. Fresh digitized shows "Come back and watch how you go" in 60 minutes the village life. In addition to playing children, chickens, goats and half-gestures on mopeds, one lives on the shear of a sheep, men in the hunt and the subsequent colliery and singing in the pub. This seems archaic, sometimes funny, but also brutal. A dead pig is shaved there.

In the second gatehouse in Braunschweig, exhibits from "Vanitas", Hanzlová's photo cycle of dried flower and plant parts and a spider in front of a black background are waiting. In these sensually morbid still lifes, the influence of portraiture of the Renaissance is visible, which also inspired Hanzlová to write her Wolfsburg-based cycle "There is something I do not know".

photo gallery


8 pictures

Photo exhibition: Once upon a time in a distant village

Both galleries present portraits of the series "Horse" (2007-2014). For this, Hanzlová often chose unusual image details, as on the exhibition poster: On it a brown horse mane is seen in front of a bush, which one would like to stroke. These photos - Hanzlová always works in portrait format, in color and without post-processing - are pleasurable and humorous: one horse rolls in the sand, another urinates, another shows the jaw-wide open mouth.

The pictures appear more free, perhaps because Hanzlová horses feel particularly connected. Like many other girls, she was fascinated at an early age, but did not get her own. "Equestrianism was considered aristocratic in socialism, no one of us had a horse, only the cooperative a driving force." Later she used and rode horses of a professional racing team.

Her extensive oeuvre did not shake Hanzlová from the sleeve, but planned exactly. As she traveled through Brixton and New York searching for motives, she took the advice of her colleague Diane Arbus: "She said: A decision takes three seconds, either you do it or not!"

Question about identity and homeland

What makes the photos of Jitka Hanzlová special: At first glance, they seem sober and a bit brittle, but on further viewing sympathy is noticeable. Like the young lady in Brixton in the pink bomber jacket. Her photos raise questions about identity, highlight tensions between people and groups, explore affiliation, alienation, past and present.

The double exhibition in Braunschweig and Wolfsburg is a varied, even moving pleasure - and with luck you can get a tour with the artist.

Exhibition: Jitka Hanzlová - Between Continuum - Museum of Photography Braunschweig and Städtische Galerie Wolfsburg, until 02.12.18

www.photomuseum.de