There’s No Place Like… New York

Through to April 20, 2023, Frankfurt’s Peter Sillem Gallery presents the exhibition ‘New York’ with works by Walter Schels.

In the 1960s, the renowned German photographer (b. 1936) spent several years living in New York, and frequently returned to the ‘city of dreams’ in the decades that followed. From the very beginning, Schels was fascinated by the Big Apple – the lights, the facades, and the perspectives it had to offer. His atmospheric, almost abstract images are as complex and unique as New York itself. For this exhibition, the photographer unearthed treasures from his archive, went into the darkroom to develop some of his negatives for the first time, and compiled a selection of rare (largely one-off) vintage prints.

“To this day, I see the world in the rectangular shape of a camera viewfinder,” the artist explains. “New York was endlessly colourful and inexhaustible: the steam rising from manhole covers; the steel of the fire escapes glittering in the sunlight; the splendid buildings; the Sundays in Central Park. Without a camera, I wouldn't have experienced it in this way.”