Angelika Platen is known for her portrait photography. She has been photographing artists for over 50 years and captures their characteristics extremely accurately in her photos.
It is no exaggeration to say that Angelika Platen has had them all in front of her camera - all the artists who became important for post-war art in Germany. From the very beginning, Angelika Platen proved to have a keen sense for the big names of tomorrow. Since 1968, after studying art in Hamburg, she has photographed many of the artists who are now regarded as important names of the art world, like Georg Baselitz, Robert Rauschenberg, Gerhard Richter or Andy Warhol. In addition, as a journalist she edited the "KUNST als WARE" page for DIE ZEIT before putting the camera aside at the end of the 1970s to work as a gallery owner and communications expert. The art scene remains her real passion.
At the end of the 90s, she resumes her artistic activities and now mainly shoots the younger generation of artists, such as Jonathan Meese, Miriam Vlaming and Alicja Kwade. At the same time, she does not lose sight of the older artists and shows an interesting view of the long-term development of established positions with her more recent pictures. "I was alienated by colour at first," she says. "For me, black and white is already colourful." Now she increasingly takes digital photos, exclusively with natural light, without spotlights or flashes, but in colour. In these photos she gets very close to the artists.
Platen manages to capture expressive traits of the artists in snapshots in a very intimate way and offers the viewer the opportunity to get closer to them and immerse themselves in a fascinating cosmos of artists.
