Helga Dickow

Encounters in Africa - Photographic Descriptions

Exhibition Duration:  17. February - 21. April 2013

For almost thirty years, political scientist Dr. Helga Dickow has traveled extensively throughout Africa for research purposes, visiting such countries as South Africa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Madagascar, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, Chad, Senegal, Mali, Benin, Burkina Faso, and Niger.  The resulting photographs document both daily culture in Africa as well as its change through Eastern and Western influences.  With her camera, Helga Dickow depicts the natural and original beauty of Africa that is still preserved despite the increasing presence of modernization. 
For the first time, a selection of her photographs are on display in an arrangement prepared specifically for this exhibition.  The photographs are complemented by several everyday objects that Dickow brought back from her travels.
documenta 13 of 2012 has shown that Africa is becoming an increasingly interesting subject for the global public.  If one considers the countries that are relevant to the contemporary art world, one finds among them many of the African countries that Dickow has visited.  Her photographs are memories of places and encounters that are not available to most travelers or tourists.  This personal and non-judgmental view allows for an open reading of African culture. 
In the words of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, "More often than not, a person who is unfamiliar with a particular type of art discovers something new in it that another person who is already acquainted with it does not see.  He strays from the beaten path and finds his own understanding." The photographs are Dickow's documents of memories, and are not intended to either further political aims or to represent all of Africa.  However, they are images that are meant to counteract the more commonplace media photographs of war, famine, and the crumbling political systems that afflict so many African countries.
As the founder of documenta Arnold Bode pointed out in 1954, exhibitions and documentations "take the art out of the ghetto of formal esthetic debates and strengthen the importance of art as a social seismograph and as an instrument of knowledge."

Press release here

Exhibition guide (in German) here

Catalogue; Informations here

Sponsored by the city of Neuenhaus and the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture.