Matthias Leupold

Matthias Leupold is not a documentary photographer, however "realistic" his pictures may appear. The reality of his pictures is always staged.

Born in East Berlin in 1959, he lived there in the district of Prenzlauer Berg until his emigration to the western part of the city in 1986, where he has been working on pictures since 1983, staged with actors and directed counter worlds to everyday life in East Germany. His research and examination of their norms and conventions led him to look for images of "reality behind reality" and topics that lie outside public and propagated self-assurance.

Matthias Leupold represents a unique figure in the artistic landscape. This is expressed in his contributions to the exhibitions: Art in the GDR, Berlin National Gallery 2003 and Berlin-Moscow/Moscow-Berlin 2004, in Moscow 2004, portraits and scenes 1980-1990 in the Akademie der Künste 2009 and Geschlossene Gesellschaft in the Berlinische Galerie 2012.

When it comes to defining Leupold's work and elaborations, one summarizes in three polar tensions: between statics and dynamics, between contemplation and narration, between comic and symbol. In the pictures, these dimensions and categories do not fall apart but merge partly or completely together.

Matthias Leupold completed his photographic education at the D.E.F.A. studio for feature films in Potsdam-Babelsberg. in the early eighties, he started staging photographs in order to express his interest in both photography and film. At first small exhibitions in East Berlin were tolerated by the GDR government. More extensive exhibitions for example at Bauhaus in Dessau and University of Fine Arts in Dresden were forbidden. In 1986, threats of arrest and condemnation influenced his decision to move from East Berlin to West Berlin. He started studying Visual Communications in 1987 at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK), completing his degree as a master student. He has traveled to many places, including America and Asia, in order to exhibit his work and to photograph in very diverse places.

Leupold is a member of the German Society for Photography (DGPh) and the German Photographic Academy.