I was just the one who wanted to look the artists in the face and soul, Angelika Platen*.
Thomas Hettche in conversation with Angelika Platen, taken from: Artist portraits by Angelika Platen, Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2011.
Angelika Platen is one of the great photographers in Germany. She is regarded as a master of the intimate artist portrait. Her photos tell of the artists' circus yesterday and today, of the connection between artwork and artist and of the special relationship between photographer and model. The list of artists portraying her is long and reads like the Who's Who of recent and recent art history.
Angelika Platen portrayed them all, many several times, many before they became famous: Joseph Beuys, Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter and Man Ray, Robert Rauschenberg and Andy Warhol, from Marina Abramović via Hanne Darboven, Sylvie Fleury, Cornelia Schleime, Monica Bonvicini to SEO. She had or has a special relationship with many. She creates individual images or sequences, similar to a film, in search of truth and authenticity and allows insights into the quintessence of artistic existence.
Her photographs of the 1960s and 1970s document and interpret a period of awakening that was important for art. At that time, portraits of Marina Abramović, Baselitz, Polke, Richter, Christo, Walter de Maria or Warhol were taken, which still shape the official image of these artists today. 1976 she put the camera aside for many years. Since 1997 she has been photographing again, exclusively analog, without flash, mostly in black and white. She takes up today's artistic avant-garde and, as a long-term study, continues the portrait history of the now arriviated. In her new series of coloured works she dedicates herself exclusively to the contemporary female art scene, which she photographs in studios and galleries and which she will exhibit in Arles and Berlin in 2018.
Her works can be found in many museums and collections: the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt; Hessisches Landesmuseum, Darmstadt; Berlinische Galerie; Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin; Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Hamburg, to name but a few.
Angelika Platen was born in Heidelberg in 1942. From 1963-65 she studied art history, Romanistics and Oriental studies at the Free University of Berlin and in 1968 photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Hamburg, before specializing in contemporary art and artist portraits as a freelance photographer and working for DIE ZEIT, among others. From 1972 to 1975 she directed the Galerie an der Milchstrasse, Hamburg, whose founder was Gunter Sachs. She later moved to Paris. From 1977 to 1997 she was head of the advertising and communications department in the automotive industry. In 1998, the Museum für Moderne Kunst in Frankfurt dedicated a large solo exhibition to her. Other museums will follow. It is the starting signal for the next phase of her artistic career.
