Fotoproject with Ulrike Fox:
“Be as you feel”

Joint photo project with the Gelsenkirchen photographer Ulrike Fox.
24 large-format black and white portraits of pupils from the Horst
Primary School Horst in Gelsenkirchen as an artistic counter-position to commercial school photography.

Photography: Ulrike Fox
Artistic direction and organisation: Thomas Klingberg
Mentor: Reinhold Adam

In cooperation with the primary school am Schloss in Horst and the district library in Gelsenkirchen Horst

Accompanying press release for the exhibition

The exhibition opening of the photo project “Be as you feel” will take place on 30 May 2014 at 17:30 in the Gelsenkirchen Horst District Library. The photographer Ulrike Fox, who comes from Gelsenkirchen, portrayed 24 children at the primary school am Schloss in Gelsenkirchen-Horst in graceful black and white photographs and left the direction to the pupils.

The initiator of the project is the photographer Thomas Klingberg, who wants to create a kind of “artistic counter-position to commercial school and kindergarten photography”. “Putting the child in the foreground in its personality and not merely seeing it as a photographic object that is meant to serve a preferred pictorial language of adults is the main concern,” Klingberg says. “The children are allowed to be there, how they feel at the moment.”

Klingberg did not take the photos personally, but the photographer and curative education nurse Ulrike Fox did. “Bringing in a pedagogical moment makes the idea round and coherent. In this project, we don’t want to see photography as a craft, but as an interactive act, as an appointment between child and photographer,” Klingberg explains.

Photographer Ulrike Fox took an immediate liking to the project. “We don’t want to criticise or even question commercial school photography at all, everything has its justification. But pointing out an alternative visual language and, above all, intensively engaging with the children, with their personalities and their urge to present themselves, is also a concern of mine, and that’s why I said yes right away when I was asked if I would like to photograph for this project.”

Klingberg chose the Gelsenkirchen-Horst district library as the exhibition venue because there is a very large range of readings and events for children there and many parents become aware of the photographs here. Jutta Schwichtenberg, head of the district library in Horst, was quickly enthusiastic about the idea and supported the team of photographers in designing the exhibition opening. The contact to the Horst primary school was established by library staff member Caroline Rullmann.

The patron and sponsor of the exhibition is Reinhold Adam, a city councillor in the Gelsenkirchen City Council and member of the cultural committee. Adam himself regularly carries out joint projects with the district library, for example as a moderator for the reading kids and as the initiator of the readings by the light of miner’s lamps, which take place annually in the mining gallery in cooperation with the Horst district library in Nordsternpark.

“Our very biggest thank you goes to the primary school at the castle in Horst, both towards the headmaster’s office and the wonderful children,” says Ulrike Fox. “We have been able to experience great open-mindedness and cordiality and have had a high level of acceptance on the part of the parents. Without the support of the headmistresses Renate Jurgawka and Melanie Maiweg, this project would not have come about at all.”

The photographs will be on display at the Gelsenkirchen Horst District Library from 30.5.2014 for approximately six weeks. Admission on the opening day of the exhibition is 5:30 pm. The opening will be musically accompanied by the children’s choir of the Im Brömm Community Primary School and the preliminary choirs of the Municipal Music School.