Annette Kelm (born 1975 in Stuttgart, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. She studied at Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and is one of the most important representatives of contemporary photography in Germany.

Themes of seeing and displaying, the constructed nature of images, as well as the disclosure of the circumstances of their production, run through Annette Kelm's work, in which documentary and staged images stand alongside one another.

In her still lifes, portraits, landscape and architectural photographs, Kelm documents modern everyday culture and often uses object photography to do so. Removed from their original context and transferred to new constellations, their motifs evoke associations that reveal artistic, historical and socio-cultural references.

The Kunsthalle zu Kiel will dedicate an exhibition to Kelm’s work in spring 2022. Previous solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been presented at international institutions, including the Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt am Main (2020); Museum Frieder Burda | Salon Berlin (2020); the Federal Foreign Office, Berlin (2019); the Fosun Foundation, Shanghai, the Peter and Irene Ludwig Foundation, Aachen, and the Kunsthalle Wien (2018); Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover (2017); Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (2016); VOX. Centre of Contemporary Image, Montréal (2016); Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld (2015); Kölnischer Kunstverein (2014); Bonner Kunstverein (2011); KW – Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin (2009); Kunsthalle Zürich (2009); and Witte de With, Rotterdam (2008).

In addition to her participation in the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), Kelm’s work has been part of numerous institutional group exhibitions, at MoMA, New York (2013); the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, and Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City (2015); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2016); Dallas Museum of Art (2018); Museum für Moderne Kunst Wien (2019), MACRO Museum, Rome (2020); Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (2021); Weserburg, Bremen (2021) and Kunsthalle Hamburg and Kunstmuseum Solothurn (2022).

Annette Kelm was awarded the Camera Austria Prize in 2015 and is represented in renowned collections, including those of Tate Modern, London; the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Centre Pompidou, Paris; Kunsthaus Zürich, Switzerland; and the Guggenheim Museum, New York.

ANNETTE KELM