ANGELIKA PLATEN

Angelika Platen Galerie Haas AG Zürich

Angelika Platen

1942 Heidelberg – lives in Berlin

Angelika Platen is the daughter of a chemist and an economist. She studies art history, Romance philology and oriental studies at the Free University of Berlin, followed by photography at the University of Fine Arts Hamburg. In 1968, she works as a photographer and photojournalist and shows her photos for the first time in the gallery Die Insel in 1969. From 1970 to 1972, she is working for the journalistic business section Kunst als Ware (art as merchandise) for the magazine Die Zeit and subsequently heads the Gunter Sachs’ Galerie an der Milchstrasse in Hamburg until 1976. In the 1970s, she creates photographic portraits of young artists, including those who had not yet achieved their later fame, such as Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Georg Baselitz, Andy Warhol and many more.

The photographer takes black and white photographs. In her opinion, colour photos are flat and all too clear. At the end of the 1970s, Platen relocates to France, where she is head of an advertising and communications department in the automotive industry. She resumes her work as a photographer in 1997, and mainly photographs younger artists like Jeff Koons. In addition, she re-captures some of the young artists of the 1970s, documenting the change of  their features as they grow older. Platen’s photographic portraits have gained international attention, and are exhibited in Germany, Italy, Romania, and other countries.

Selected works

Reinhard Pods, Ohne Titel (will), 1981, Oil on canvas, 200 x 220.3 cm

Angelika Platen
Two in the Mirror (Sigmar Polke/Angelika Platen)

1972
hand printed silver gelatin on baryta paper
frame: passepartout 52 x 42 cm

Reinhard Pods, Ohne Titel (will), 1981, Oil on canvas, 200 x 220.3 cm

Angelika Platen
Stumme Zwiesprache (Markus Lüpertz)

2017
archival pigment print baryta
frame: passepartout 40 x 55 cm

Exhibitions

Angelika Platen Galerie Haas AG Zürich

17 October – 06 December 2019

Angelika Platen

5 Meister im Visier

The show exhibits not only legendary black-white photographs by the nearly 80 years old photograph Angelika Platen, who already in 1967 documented Art History with her shots, but also works by the 5 Meister im Visier.

More →

Catalogue

Excerpt

“She loves black and white photography, because then, as she thinks, something has to be added in one’s mind. For the photographer Angelika Platen, colour photos are rather shallow and all too clear.”

Erika Schlessinger-Költzsch