Petra Wunderlich (born in 1954 in

Gelsenkirchen Gelsenkirchen (, , ; ) is the List of cities in Germany by population, 25th-most populous city of Germany and the 11th-most populous in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia with 262,528 (2016) inhabitants. On the Emscher, Emscher River (a tribu ...

) is a German photographer. She is associated with the

Düsseldorf School of Photography Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the seventh-largest city in Germany, with a 2022 population of 629,047. The Düssel, ...

. Wunderlich lives and works in

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...

and

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

Studies

Wunderlich studied at first painting at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris, from 1975 to 1985. She later decided to study photography, and as such was as a master student under

Bernd Becher Bernd is a Low German short form of the given name Bernhard (English Bernard). List of persons with given name Bernd The following people share the name Bernd. *Bernd Brückler (born 1981), Austrian hockey player *Bernd Cullmann (1939–2025), Ge ...

at the

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Blinky Palermo, Ma ...

, from 1985 to 1988. Wunderlich belongs to the first generation of students of the Düsseldorf School of Photography. She received a work scholarship from the Kunstfonds Foundation, in 1987, and the Karl Schmidt Rottluff Scholarship, in 1988.

Work

The central themes in Wunderlich's work are church buildings and quarries. She always photographs in black and white. Her works are always devoided of people. A subject of her work are the quarries in

Carrara Carrara ( ; ; , ) is a town and ''comune'' in Tuscany, in central Italy, of the province of Massa and Carrara, and notable for the white or blue-grey Carrara marble, marble quarried there. It is on the Carrione River, some Boxing the compass, ...

, which she has been photographing since the 1980s, and also from

Solnhofen Solnhofen is a municipality in the district of Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen in the region of Middle Franconia in the ' of Bavaria in Germany. It is in the Altmühl valley. The local area is famous in geology and palaeontology for Solnhofen lime ...

, since the 1990s. These quarries rock layers reflect the history of art and architecture, because great masters such as

Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 147518February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspir ...

have worked with marble from Carrara, similarly to many architects and builders since the

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

days. Quarries also provide the raw material for the church buildings. In her early works, Wunderlich photographed the churches as seen from the front and with a strong cropping, never depicting the whole building. This formal rigor was later broken by showing different buildings and their interaction. For the series ''mapping'' (1994–1998), Wunderlich photographed the many different churches that exist in

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

, New York. She shows how the different ethnic groups that live there inscribe their own religion and aesthetics into the cityscape, by designing the facades with religious references. Wunderlich also created a photographic series of synagogues in New York, from 1995 to 2015, first shown with the title ''Common Ground'' at the Bernhard Knaus Fine Art Gallery in

Frankfurt Frankfurt am Main () is the most populous city in the States of Germany, German state of Hesse. Its 773,068 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the List of cities in Germany by population, fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located in the forela ...

, in 2013–2014.

Exhibitions (selection)

* Seven Stones, BERNHARD KNAUS FINE ART, Frankfurt, Germany (solo), 2013 * No-Men's Land - 7 Positions of contemporary Photography, Neuer Kunstverein Aschaffenburg e.V, Aschaffenburg, Germany, 2011–2012 * Die Erfindung der Wirklichkeit - Photographie an der Kunstakademie Düsseldorf von 1970 bis heute, Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Germany, 2010–2011 * Viaggio in Italia, Palazzo Fabroni, Pistoia, Italy, 2010-2011Petra Wunderlich, Artnet
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wunderlich, Petra 1954 births Living people 20th-century German photographers 21st-century German photographers German contemporary artists Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni People from Gelsenkirchen 20th-century German women artists 20th-century German women photographers 21st-century German women photographers