The photojournalistic work of Abisag Tüllmann online
Press release from 10/07/2020
bpk picture agency launches new website on Abisag Tüllmann's photojournalistic work - 10,000 digital views of original prints, backsheets, contact sheets, colour slides and documents from 40 years
To mark the 85th birthday of photographer Abisag Tüllmann (1935-1996), the bpk picture agency is launching the new Abisag Tüllmann website on 7 October 2020: www.bpk-archive.de/tuellmann/. The online presentation marks the conclusion of a comprehensive project. With the financial support of the Abisag Tüllmann Foundation, Tüllmann's press photographic estate has been catalogued and digitised in the archive of the bpk picture agency of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation over the past 3.5 years.
A total of around 10,000 digital images are available online on the new website. It offers an introduction to Tüllmann's photojournalistic work via three main categories - On the person, On the work, On the estate. In addition to biographical information, a bibliography and a list of exhibitions, specially developed thematic dossiers provide access to the work.
The special features of an analogue press photography archive with corresponding finding aids are examined in more detail in the section "On the estate". It also looks at the context of photographic production and photojournalistic practice, which have undergone rapid change since Tüllmann's beginnings in the late 1950s. Another ambitious aim of the project was to consider photography as both a source and an object. The online presentation therefore shows not only the image motifs but also the object characteristics of the photographs by means of exemplary reverse sides, variants of a motif with different tonal values and published images of photographs.
Abisag Tüllmann is one of the most important German photographers of the 20th century. Her extensive oeuvre represents over four decades of contemporary political events and everyday and cultural life. From 1958 until her death, she worked as a freelance photojournalist for over 100 newspapers and magazines, including Der Spiegel, Die Zeit, FAZ and Frankfurter Rundschau. She focussed on the socio-political and cultural events of her time, paying particular attention to the conditions of human coexistence and marginalised groups in society. In the 1970s, it was the international liberation movements and the accompanying political and social changes in Algeria, Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and South Africa, among others, that she followed intensively and documented photographically. She travelled to Israel several times in the 1980s as a critical observer and documentarian.
"In contrast to quick, exposing photojournalism, accusatory social reportage or sober documentary photography, the images published in exhibitions and publications bear witness to the respect and sympathy that Tüllmann shows to those she portrays, and yet they are decidedly political." (Martha Caspers: See - Look. Insight into the work of Abisag Tüllmann. In: Abisag Tüllmann 1935-1996. photo reportages and theatre photography, Frankfurt 2011, p. 11)
In addition to her work as a photojournalist, Abisag Tüllmann devoted herself to theatre photography from 1962 onwards, shaping the perception of major theatres at home and abroad with her own style. Her artistic collaboration with Claus Peymann, whose productions she accompanied photographically for almost 30 years, took centre stage. The theatre archive, comprising more than 200 stage works, was purchased by the Deutsches Theatermuseum in Munich during the photographer's lifetime.
The reportage and portrait-specific part of the photo archive was acquired with all rights by the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation for the bpk image archive in 1997. This archive is as extensive as it is diverse in terms of content. It comprises more than 56,000 original prints, over 8,500 negative films, around 25,000 colour slides and supplementary collection materials, which were viewed and selected for digitisation during the project period.
With the website bpk-archive.de/tuellmann, a virtual presentation has been created that aims to publicise the work in all its diversity, invites all interested parties to further explore Abisag Tüllmann's photographic work and opens up the work for research.