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16° Pisces. Retrospective
16° Pisces. Retrospective
Walter Schels
June 16, 2026
Untitled (from the series: Beim Friseur), 1974
© Walter Schels / Stiftung F.C. Gundlach
His images oscillate between documentation and alteration, formal rigour and bold experimentation: over the course of almost seven decades, Walter Schels has created a multi-faceted and ever-surprising life’s work. To mark his 90th birthday, the photographer’s visual worlds can now be explored in a Berlin exhibition encompassing more than 300 works.
Since the late 1960s, Schels has divided his focus between documentary and artistic approaches. The showcase begins with his early Leica photographs of everyday life in New York, illustrating his first forays into the medium. In the years that followed, Schels became especially known for his black-and-white portraits, characterised by a stringently pared-down visual language. In his long-term studies and portrait series – such as Blind, Noch mal leben (Live Again), and trans* – the artist explores fundamental questions of the human condition: presence, perception, identity, and life’s major transitions. At the core of his work is the quest for the uncontrived. His subjects range from newborns to centenarians, from well-known figures to ordinary people, from animals to botanical studies.
The presentation invites visitors to re-experience his famous portraits and series in the context of other parts of his oeuvre that were created in parallel, but have never been showcased before.
The title of the exhibition, 16° Pisces, is a reference to the artist’s zodiac constellation: at the time of his birth, the sun was positioned at 16 degrees in the sign of Pisces. For Schels, this represents a poetic form of self-recognition, with associated traits such as sensitivity and intuition reflecting his lifelong interest in people and the exploration of existential questions.
Walter Schels has always regarded his work as an ongoing process. Transformation plays a key role, both as a thematic motif and a stylistic method. By using overpainting, solarisation and collage, he pushes the limits of photography into the realm of painting. This has culminated in his most recent abstract works, which involve direct applications of photo chemicals as well as plant fragments – thereby turning the materiality of the photographic process into the subject itself.
Ulrich RüterSince the late 1960s, Schels has divided his focus between documentary and artistic approaches. The showcase begins with his early Leica photographs of everyday life in New York, illustrating his first forays into the medium. In the years that followed, Schels became especially known for his black-and-white portraits, characterised by a stringently pared-down visual language. In his long-term studies and portrait series – such as Blind, Noch mal leben (Live Again), and trans* – the artist explores fundamental questions of the human condition: presence, perception, identity, and life’s major transitions. At the core of his work is the quest for the uncontrived. His subjects range from newborns to centenarians, from well-known figures to ordinary people, from animals to botanical studies.
The presentation invites visitors to re-experience his famous portraits and series in the context of other parts of his oeuvre that were created in parallel, but have never been showcased before.
The title of the exhibition, 16° Pisces, is a reference to the artist’s zodiac constellation: at the time of his birth, the sun was positioned at 16 degrees in the sign of Pisces. For Schels, this represents a poetic form of self-recognition, with associated traits such as sensitivity and intuition reflecting his lifelong interest in people and the exploration of existential questions.
Walter Schels has always regarded his work as an ongoing process. Transformation plays a key role, both as a thematic motif and a stylistic method. By using overpainting, solarisation and collage, he pushes the limits of photography into the realm of painting. This has culminated in his most recent abstract works, which involve direct applications of photo chemicals as well as plant fragments – thereby turning the materiality of the photographic process into the subject itself.
ALL IMAGES ON THIS PAGE: © Walter Schels
LFI 3.2026+-
Walter Schels: Leica Special. New York in the sixties and seventies, revealed in early Leica images captured by the German photographer. A rediscovery of early works More
Walter Schels+-
Was born on March 7, 1936
in Landshut, Germany. 1957 to 1965: After his apprenticeship as a window dress-er, he worked in Barcelona, Canada and Switzerland before moving to New York.
In 1970, he returned to Germany, photographing for adverts as well as fashion and lifestyle magazines. As a freelance photogra-pher, he became particular-ly known for his character studies of prominent figures. For many years, he also created animal portraits with the same visual intensity. Together with his wife, the journalist Beate Lakotta, Walter Schels developed his multi-award-winning series on hospice patients, photographed before and after their deaths. The photographer has been based in Hamburg since 1990. More
Untitled (from the series: Beim Friseur), 1974
© Walter Schels / Stiftung F.C. Gundlach
CF No 2, Blauer Strauß (from the series: Crazy Flowers), 2012
© Walter Schels / Stiftung F.C. Gundlach
Luis Trenker’s (96) right Hand, 1988
© Walter Schels / Stiftung F.C. Gundlach
Empire State Building, New York 1968, analoge Fotomontage 1976
© Walter Schels / Stiftung F.C. Gundlach