Manfred Paul

Manfred Paul is one of the most important representatives of the GDR author photography and was with its participation in the exhibition “Geschlossene Gesellschaft"/ “Closed Society" (Berlin Gallery, 2012) at the latest known to a wider audience.

His works deal with the existential questions of human existence. The photographs, part of the work-groups “Verena", the “Still Life" or the “Artist Portraits", are images that become parables to understand the offense of all things as a condition of life. These photographic series are long-term projects that are continually developed and updated. Previously Manfred Paul has only served the medium of black/ white photography, so the work groups of the recent years have been expanded by color photographs.

Using extreme long exposures Manfred Paul has fixed the change of a seascape. The result are images of subtle beauty that keep the change of space in time as a growing color spectrum, almost monochrome (seascapes).

Manfred Paul, born in 1942 in Schraplau near Halle, studied photography at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB Leipzig) and film at the HFF Potsdam-Babelsberg. From 1974 to 1994 Manfred Paul was a lecturer for photography at the FWG Berlin, from 1995 to 2007 he hold the chair in photography and audiovisual media at the FHTW Berlin. The artist lives and works since 1968 in Berlin.

His works are inter alia part of the collections of the Berlinische Galerie, Kupferstich-Kabinett Dresden, Museum Ludwig in Cologne, the Musée de l' Elysée Lausanne, MOMA, New York, the Bibliothèque National de France, Paris as well as of other private and public collections.