With the exhibition "INTO THE UNSEEN", one of the most important private photo collections of the present day is saying goodbye to Europe - before around 6,500 works from the WALTHER COLLECTION are donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, this last major show unfolds as a polyphonic meditation on the invisible: on spirituality, memory, transformation and the sensual dimension of photographic experience.
The exhibition spans an impressive panorama from historical to contemporary positions - from Eadweard Muybridge, the pioneer of movement studies, to artists such as Cang Xin, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Santu Mofokeng, Berni Searle, Yang Fudong and Jo Ractliffe. What they all have in common is the desire to think photography beyond pure visibility - as a medium that touches the audible, the tactile, even the physical-spiritual.
Martina Bacigalupo, Gulu Real Art Studio, 2011-2012, Courtesy the artist and The Walther Collection, New York / Neu-Ulm
Curated by Nadine Isabelle Henrich (Haus der Photographie) and Prof. Tina M. Campt (Princeton University), in close collaboration with Artur Walther, the show unfolds in four multisensory chapters. It activates what the curators describe as "other registers of seeing" - a perception that focuses less on the eye and more on the resonance of sound, texture and atmosphere. INTO THE UNSEEN" thus radically questions the familiar role of photography as a documentary tool: the focus is no longer on depicting reality, but on experiencing its inner vibration.
The exhibition presents new commissioned works, including a sound installation by Colombian photographer Felipe Romero Beltrán and an expansive photographic installation by artist and forensic scientist Ana María Gómez López. Both works expand the photographic space to include acoustic and physical dimensions - they make audible and tangible what otherwise remains hidden in the image.
"INTO THE UNSEEN" is not only a tribute to Artur Walther's artistic vision, but also a reflection on the end of an era: on the transition of a visionary collection from a private to a public context. By showing this legacy, the Deichtorhallen Hamburg is readjusting the photographic gaze - away from merely seeing, towards sensing the world in all its invisible depths.
October 24, 2025 to April 26, 2026
www.deichtorhallen.de
Martina Bacigalupo, Gulu Real Art Studio, 2011-2012, Courtesy the artist and The Walther Collection, New York / Neu-Ulm
