Rooms for Collections

22 May 2019 – 15 Jan 2020

Photography by Constantin Beyer and Johannes Heinke

In 1926 Günther Beyer (1888–1965) opened a photo studio in Weimar which went by the proud name of “Beyer’s Scientific Institute of Projection Photography”. His son Klaus (1922–2007) and grandson Constantin (*1961) continued running the studio as freelance photographers. All three called themselves “light designers” as their professional title. The studio never operated a retail shop nor ever left the town where it was founded.

The exhibition “Rooms for Collections” presents numerous photos from the estate of the light-designing Beyer family in Weimar which uniquely portray the changes to the collection rooms in the Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek throughout the decades. It also features works by the photo artist Johannes Heinke (*1986) who documented items salvaged from the “Carlsmühle” in 2010, which he entitled “Lost Knowledge”. The series is comprised of nine so-called diptychs. Each photo pair consists of a full-size and a close-up photo of ash books which were packed into cardboard boxes and stacked on Euro pallets after the library fire in Weimar in 2004.

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