Simone Nieweg (born 1962) is a German

photographer A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs. Duties and types of photograp ...

. She photographs agricultural landscapes in rural Germany. She lives and works in Düsseldorf. She has had solo exhibitions at The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford, UK and at

Kunsthalle Bielefeld The Kunsthalle Bielefeld is a modern and contemporary art museum in Bielefeld, Germany. It was designed by Philip Johnson in 1968, and paid for by the businessman and art patron Rudolf August Oetker. Nieweg's work is held in several public collections, including the

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis is an art museum for contemporary art, located in St. Louis, Missouri. Known informally as the CAM St. Louis, the museum is located at 3750 Washington Boulevard in the Grand Center Arts District. The build ...

Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography is the oldest photography museum in Amsterdam. The museum is housed in a monumental canal house at Keizersgracht 401. Since 1999, it has served as the first museum in the Netherlands fully dedicated to photog ...

, the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street (Manhattan), 53rd Street between Fifth Avenue, Fifth and Sixth Avenues. MoMA's collection spans the late 19th century to the present, a ...

in New York, the

Saint Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is an art museum located in St. Louis, Missouri, United States. With paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from around the world, its three-story building stands in Forest Park in ...

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern art, modern and contemporary art museum and nonprofit organization located in San Francisco, California. SFMOMA was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th-century art ...

and the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

Life and work

Nieweg was born in

Bielefeld Bielefeld () is a city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 341,755, it is also the most populous city in the administrative region () of Detmold (region), Detmold and the L ...

, Ostwestfalen-Lippe, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. She attended 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 ...

between 1984 and 1990, where she studied 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 ...

. She completed her studies as his master student. She uses a

large format Large format photography refers to any imaging format of or larger. Large format is larger than "medium format", the or size of Hasselblad, Mamiya, Rollei, Kowa, and Pentax cameras (using 120 film, 120- and 220-roll film), and much la ...

camera. She belongs to the second generation of Becher students. From 2005 to 2006, Nieweg was artist in residence at the

Cité internationale des arts The Cité internationale des arts is an artist-in-residence building complex which accommodates artists of all specialities and nationalities in Paris. It comprises two sites, one located in the Marais and the other in Montmartre. Approximately ...

, in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

. Nieweg photography is based on nature. People are absent from her photographs. Her subjects tend to appear calm and rural: they are fields, meadows, allotments, grain fields, vegetable patches; there are also pumpkins, savoy cabbage and turnips, along with garden fences and garden sheds. Between 1986 and 2012, Nieweg explored "the German tradition of "Grabeland," a unique community gardening system practiced on the outskirts of urban centers." She "photographed the agricultural landscape found on the outskirts of towns and industrial areas in the Rühr and Lower Rhine. Plots of unused land, leased out for one year, are transformed into richly planted allotments, after which they are ploughed and left unseeded." Because of the temporary nature of the lease, tenants do not build permanent huts and stable sheds, as is usual in allotment gardens, but use meagre means to assemble small, wobbly sheds for equipment. "Nieweg photographs subjects such as gates, fields and allotments. All show individuality, reflecting the personality of their owners: sheds held together with wire and corrugated iron tacked haphazardly to wooden frames; rickety structures, that, despite their impermanence, have been carefully built." This work was published in the books ''Felder und Gärten'' (1996), ''Grabeland'' (2001), ''Landschaften und Gartenstücke'' (2002), and ''Nature Man-Made'' (2012).

Publications

Books of work by Nieweg

*''Felder und Gärten.'' , Münster, 1996, . With a text by Volker Kahmen. *''Grabeland.'' Bonn:

Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn The Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, or LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn, is a museum in Bonn, Germany, run by the Rhineland Landscape Association. It is one of the oldest museums in the country. In 2003 it completed an extensive renovation. The museum has a ...

, 2001. With a text by Christoph Schaden. *''Landschaften und Gartenstücke.''. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2002. . With texts by Els Barents, Saskia Asser and Andrea Domelse. *''Natur der Menschen''. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2012. With a text by Heinz Liesbrock. **''Nature Man-Made''. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2012. . *''Der Wald, Die Bäume, Das Licht: Photographien''. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2016. .

Publications with contributions by Nieweg

*''Art Photography Now''. New York:

Aperture In optics, the aperture of an optical system (including a system consisting of a single lens) is the hole or opening that primarily limits light propagated through the system. More specifically, the entrance pupil as the front side image o ...

, 2005. By

Susan Bright Susan Bright is a British writer and curator of photography, specializing in how photography is made, disseminated and interpreted. She has curated exhibitions internationally at institutions including Tate Britain, National Portrait Gallery in L ...

. . *''The Düsseldorf School of Photography''. New York:

, 2010. Germany: Schirmer/Mosel, 2010. Edited by Stefan Gronert. Includes work by

Bernd and Hilla Becher Bernhard "Bernd" Becher (; 20 August 1931 – 22 June 2007), and Hilla Becher, née Wobeser (2 September 1934 – 10 October 2015), were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their e ...

, Laurenz Berges, Elger Esser,

Andreas Gursky Andreas Gursky (born 15 January 1955) is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. He is known for his Large format (photography), large format architecture and Landscape photography, landscape colour photog ...

Candida Höfer Candida Höfer (born 4 February 1944) is a German photographer. She is a renowned photographer known for her exploration of public spaces and architecture. In her career she transitioned from portraiture to focusing on spaces like libraries and m ...

, Axel Hütte, Nieweg,

Thomas Ruff Thomas Ruff (born 10 February 1958) is a German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. He has been described as "a master of edited and reimagined images". Ruff shares a studio on Düsseldorf's Hansaallee, with fellow German ...

Jörg Sasse Jörg Sasse (born Bad Salzuflen, 1962) is a German photographer. His work uses found images that are scanned, pixelated and manipulated. He lives and works in Berlin. In 2003 Sasse won the Cologne Fine Art Award and in 2005 was shortlisted for t ...

Thomas Struth Thomas Struth (born 11 October 1954) is a German photographer who is best known for his ''Museum Photographs'' series, black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the 1970s, and his family photographs series. ...

, and Petra Wunderlich; a foreword by Lothar Schirmer, an essay by Gronert, and summary biographies, exhibition lists and bibliographies for each of the photographers. .

Solo exhibitions

*''Landscapes and Gardens'', The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford, UK, 2004 *''Natur der Menschen'' = nature man-made, , Bottrop, Germany, 2012 *''Gärten/Felder'' = gardens/fields,

Public collections

Nieweg's work is held in the following public collections: *

, St. Louis, Missouri *

, Amsterdam: 8 prints (as of December 2020) *

, New York: 6 prints (as of December 2020) *

, St. Louis, Missouri *

, San Francisco, California: 5 prints (as of December 2020) *

, London: 3 prints (as of December 2020)

References

External links

Nieweg at Gallery Luisotti
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nieweg, Simone German landscape photographers German women photographers 20th-century German photographers 21st-century German photographers Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni People from Bielefeld Living people 1962 births 20th-century German women 21st-century German women