‘I quickly realised that combining colour with black-and-white photography was like trying to mix oil and water, so I decided not to force it,’ says the curator, who used the darker upstairs galleries to bring out the richness of colour in photographs by William Eggleston, Feurer and Robert Polidori.Īs one of the world’s leading authorities on photography, Garner has published essays on Richard Avedon, Cecil Beaton, Guy Bourdin, Newton, Penn and numerous others, but he still says he has ‘a lot to learn’ about the medium. The exhibition is divided into black-and-white photographs on the ground floor, and colour photography on the first floor. ‘My relationship with the gallery goes back to its foundations,’ says Garner, ‘we share a commitment to great magazine photography - the kind of photography that translates our dreams and ideals into inspiring and indelible images.’

Over the years it has represented many pioneering photographers, including Hans Feurer, Irving Penn, Peter Lindbergh and Herb Ritts. Named after the journal established by Alfred Stieglitz in 1903, CAMERA WORK was set up in 1997 in an old coach house discovered by Garner’s friend, the photographer Helmut Newton. ‘When I finally arrived in Berlin, I found they had followed my instructions to the millimetre. ‘I was sent scaled-down elevations of the galleries and the pictures in their frames, and I did it the old-fashioned way, with scissors and paste on the sitting room floor,’ he explains. However, a busy schedule and the lingering limitations of lockdown travel meant the curation was, it’s fair to say, unorthodox. ‘In fact, they gave me carte blanche, so I chose images that had been part of my life, as well as being emblematic of CAMERA WORK’s agenda,’ he says. When CAMERA WORK director Ute Hartjen invited photography expert Philippe Garner to curate the Berlin gallery’s 25th anniversary exhibition, the specialist assumed there would be some restrictions on what he could show.

Hans Feurer by Hans Feuer