Designed World: A Tata Ronkholz Retrospective Exhibition at Huis Marseille Photography

This retrospective exhibition at Huis Marseille celebrates the work of Tata Ronkholz (1940–1997), a pioneering photographer, product designer, and interior architect. It showcases her objective-documentary photography, focusing on urban everyday culture through series like kiosks and industrial gates, alongside her contributions to design.

Huis Marseille presents 'Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940–1997)', the first large-scale tribute to the multifaceted artist whose work is now gaining international recognition. Ronkholz, a student of Bernd and Hilla Becher, was a photographer, product designer, and interior architect. Her photographic work adheres to objective-documentary traditions, characterized by clear compositions, serial approaches, and a focus on architectural structures and everyday scenes. Utilizing a large-format camera, she produced sharply defined images where the subject matter is paramount. While known for her black and white photography, she also engaged with color to explore artistic color photography trends of the 1970s and '80s. The exhibition features notable series such as her captivating photographs of kiosks and small shops, capturing moments of urban everyday culture primarily in Cologne and Düsseldorf between 1977 and 1985. These images, like 'Trinkhalle, Köln-Nippes' and 'Boutique, Köln-Mülheim', are amusing and engaging, illustrating the evolution of product offerings, decoration, and advertising in public spaces and indirectly testifying to social, cultural, and economic change. Another significant series focuses on industrial gates, photographed between 1977 and 1985, where these structures function as interfaces between public and private space, imbuing the everyday with aesthetic and abstract significance. The retrospective also delves into Ronkholz's career as a product designer and interior architect from 1961 to 1977, showcasing her furniture and lighting designs characterized by clear forms and functional elegance, as well as early photographs of architectural forms from Italy and France, underscoring her affinity for the 'designed world'. The exhibition includes a collaboration with fellow student Thomas Struth on a documentary series of Düsseldorf's 'Rheinhafen' harbor area.

Information regarding ticket purchasing and exhibition access is available via the museum's official channels. The exhibition is accompanied by a catalogue available for purchase in the museum shop.