Into The Unseen: The Walther Collection
THE WALTHER COLLECTION is considered one of the world’s most renowned collections of global photography. This exhibition marks the final major presentation of the collection in Europe before 6,500 works are gifted to THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART in New York. INTO THE UNSEEN challenges visitors to look beyond the visible and make the unseen – the mystical, the repressed, or the elusive – perceptible by activating photography’s audible, tactile, and emotional registers. This multisensory exhibition thus engages critiques of the dominance of vision by charting a more expansive understanding of photography and embracing a new poetics of the unseen.
INTO THE UNSEEN features works by, among others, Cang Xin, Em’kal Eyongakpa, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Santu Mofokeng, Eadweard Muybridge, Jo Ractliffe, RongRong, Berni Searle, and Yang Fudong, as well as a new sound work by photographer Felipe Romero Beltrán and a new photo installation by artist and forensic scientist Ana María Gómez López.
The exhibition, curated by Nadine Isabelle Henrich, art historian and curator of the House of Photography, and Prof. Tina M. Campt, historian and Roger S. Berlind Professor of Humanities at Princeton University, was developed in close dialogue with Artur Walther.
We thank The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for its collaboration.
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About the Walther Collection
The Walther Collection was founded by Artur Walther who built the collection largely in collaboration with renowned curator Okwui Enwezor. In 2010, Walther opened a dedicated museum campus in Neu-Ulm and in 2011 the Project Space in the West Chelsea Arts Building in New York City. The Walther Collection has been devoted to the critical understanding of historical and contemporary photography, drawing from its expansive holdings of photography and media art from Africa, China, Japan, Europe, and America, as well as vernacular imagery from across the globe. In May 2025, the Collection announced a major promised gift to The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. INTO THE UNSEEN is the final major presentation of the collection in Europe.
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Publication: Into the Unseen – The Walther Collection
With essays such as Nadine Isabelle Henrich’s In Praise of the Unseen: On the Multisensorial Shadows of Photography, Tina M. Campt’s Into the Unseen: Making the Familiar Strange, Shawn Michelle Smith’s First Photographs, Ana María Gómez López’s Species Inquirenda, along with contributions by Artur Walther and Felipe Romero Beltrán, this publication offers a curatorial and theoretical framing of the exhibition Into the Unseen – The Walther Collection. Like the artworks reproduced in its pages, the book seeks to question and expand how we engage and encounter photography by proposing conceptual and curatorial strategies that highlight a multisensorial and affecting approach to this complex medium.
Featuring installation views and individual works by Yto Barrada, Alphonse Bertillon, Song Dong, Em’kal Eyongakpa, Rotimi Fani-Kayode, Yang Fudong, David Goldblatt, Ana María Gómez López, Jules Bernard Luys, Santu Mofokeng, Eadweard Muybridge, Dawit L. Petros, Jo Ractliffe, Felipe Romero Beltrán, Berni Searle, and Cang Xin, as well as vernacular images and albums by Hardin J. Callithan, William T. Gordon, and unidentified photographers, the book offers an expansive and unconventional reframing of photographic practice and perception.
Editors: Tina M. Campt, Nadine Isabelle Henrich
Publisher: Steidl Verlag
Available here
Press Information
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Press releaseAdd to downloads
Into the Unseen: The Walther Collection
Stand: 20.10.2025
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Press releaseAdd to downloads
Into the Unseen: The Walther Collection
Stand: 20.10.2025
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