Vertrauliche Distanz. Fotografien von Barbara Niggl Radloff 1958–2010

About

After a youth spent between the ruins of the Second World War, Barbara Niggl Radloff (1936-2010) picked up her camera and started to tell the story of the people of post-war Munich and what their lives were really like. Yet she would soon interrupt her burgeoning career as a photojournalist to start a family, only returning to this profession in the mid-1970s. She has left us an impressive body of work largely overlooked until recently.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung first printed her pictures while she was still a student at Munich’s "Institut für Bildjournalismus". In 1960, she was recruited by the Münchner Illustrierte to be the only female photographer on the magazine’s staff. In the second part of her career, until her death in 2010, she created portraits of international artists and writers in residence who stayed at Munich’s Villa Waldberta in Feldafing. With her enquiring mind and empathetic nature, she created vivid portraits of her subjects, including world-famous cultural personalities such as Erich Kästner, Hannah Arendt, Carl Zuckmayer, Max Horkheimer and Emilio Vedova.
In 2018, her artistic estate was donated by her family to the Münchner Stadtmuseum. The archive includes more than 2,500 prints and over 50,000 negatives. This exhibition draws onNiggl Radloff’s entire oeuvre, placing her images clearly within the context of “humanist photography” and the contemporary press.