A "classic" of his field, which has created a rich and multifaceted work in about five decades. Ulrich Mack was a proven reporter on the road. He has created remarkably sensitive artist and politician portraits. With the discreet, fast Leica he knew how to handle as well as with the large format or the instant picture.
He photographed in the spirit of a "photography humanist", but also conceptually in the form of ambitious long-term projects in self-commission. Not to forget his time as a professor in Dortmund, where he showed the way for young photographers for more than two decades. Against this background, it is surprising that Ulrich Mack is still an insider tip.
The art business loves photographers who bring thematically or stylistically to a simple common denominator and let them "label". Mack eludes all drawers. Again and again he has reinvented himself, looking for new topics and challenges, and also entering new territory in terms of style and aesthetics on a regular basis.
The extensive exhibition in the Leica Gallery Frankfurt presents all aspects of Ulrich Mack's thematically and stylistically broad-based work. Portraits of well-known writers (Henry Miller, Peter Rühmkorf, Günter Grass) can be seen as well as portraits of sculptors and painters (Alexander Calder, Max Ernst, Françoise Gilot).
The exhibition presents his major reports (Six Day War, John F. Kennedy in Germany), but also his free series, starting with a formstrengen view of the old Ruhr area and ending with his great landscapes, bundled under the title "Silence - Wide distance ". Rarely in recent times the theme has been so sensitively, precisely and sensually described with the camera: nature as the very root of our being.
