Marcus Kaiser is a photographer and artist who investigates photography and image media as media of historical, cultural, and social self-description. His work combines artistic practice with image-theoretical and media-critical research, spanning from early modern optical media to digital platforms and AI-based image systems.

In projects such as “Mauerblicke/Wall Views” (1990), in which the Berlin Wall itself becomes an image-producing medium through the camera obscura, spaces of reflection on political border-drawing and ideological regimes of vision emerge. Further works — including camera obscura installations in Sanssouci Park, psychogeographic experiments in Berlin’s urban space, or cinematic journeys through virtual city models — understand images as experimental arrangements in which perception, space, and technical apparatus are investigated together.

Kaiser’s research focuses on image theory, media criticism, and the analysis of digital image cultures and social media image practices, particularly with regard to power relations, capitalization, and contemporary image politics. A further focus concerns new image technologies: algorithmically driven computational photography, photographically and sensorially grounded meta-images, apparative and generative processes, as well as AI images without sensory reference and their epistemic and aesthetic consequences.

Kaiser was an artistic-academic assistant at the Caspar David Friedrich Institute at the University of Greifswald and has held teaching positions at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts, Anhalt University of Applied Sciences in Dessau, the German Jordanian University in Amman, and Griffith University in Brisbane. Since 2012, he has taught photography and image theory at the Faculty of Design at Technische Hochschule Würzburg-Schweinfurt, where he systematically integrates artistic research, theoretical instruction, and critically reflective engagement with contemporary image cultures.

With the volume Im Blick der Bilder. Digitalität, Fotografie & Bildkultur, Kaiser presents a foundational study on the role of photography in the digital age. The book unfolds in dialogic form a typology of contemporary image forms — from everyday and social media images to algorithmically driven photography and meta-images through to AI-based simulations — and discusses their significance for authenticity, reference, indexicality, forensic practice, and image politics.

Exhibitions (Selected)
2024: Creating New Worlds Instead of Forgetting Them – Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland
2021: Supersam: Centre for Contemporary Art – Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, Poland
2020: A Brief History of Photographic Art – Kunstmuseum Heidenheim
2017: Wall Views: National Media Museum, Bradford, United Kingdom (catalogue)
2014: Poetics of Light, New Mexico Museum, Palace of the Governors, Santa Fe, USA (catalogue)
2014: Berlin 90 +, La Ville-la Ruine, Rencontres Images et Ville; Galerie Negpos, Nîmes, France
2010: 40 Years of Video Art, Ludwig Forum for International Art, Aachen (catalogue)
2010: FallMauerFall, Museum Ephraim’s Palace – City Museum, Berlin (catalogue)
2009: Record Again, ZKM Karlsruhe (catalogue)

Monographs
Im Blick der Bilder, Springer Wiesbaden, 2023
Wall Views, Extrabooks Berlin, 2009
z.T. Garten, Die Stadt in der Hütte, Greifswald University Press, 2004
Marcus Kaiser – Fotografische Arbeiten, Kunstmuseum Heidenheim, 1994

Works in Collected Catalogues (Selected)
Under the Open Sky: Artists Working with Alternative Photography, Logos, Berlin, 2017
Esthétique du mur géopolitique, Elisa Ganivet, Enjeux contemporains, Presses de l’Université du Québec (PUQ), 2015
Poetics of Light: Pinhole Photography: Selections from the Pinhole Resource Collection. Museum of New Mexico Press, 2014.
Record > Again!: 40jahrevideokunst.de – Part 2; Peter Weibel (ed.), Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2010. Pp. 176–179
Le sténopé – De la photographie sans objectif, Jean-Michel Galley, Elisabeth Towns, Actes Sud, 2008
Organisation – Korpys/Löffler 1990–2005, ed. by Christoph Keller, Revolver-Verlag, 2006. Pp. 262–289
Moving Territories, Art – Public Sphere – New Media, Akademie Schloss Solitude and Merz Akademie, Stuttgart, 2003
A Need for Realism – Solitude in Ujadowski; Centrum Sztuki Wspólczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski, Warsaw, 2002.
Circles, Siemens Kultur Projekte / ZKM Karlsruhe. Revolver-Verlag, 2002.
Der Wandel, No. 1 (Poland), Artists’ Magazine, Berlin, 2001
Zeitgeschichte 95, Federal Ministry of Education, Research and Science, Bonn, 1995
Aneignung von Welten, Brigitte Buberl (ed.), Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, Dortmund, 1993. Pp. 98–101
Contretype, No. 31, Brussels, 1992. Pp. 6–7
Mai de la Photo, Reims, 1991. Pp. 16 & 18
Mozart in Tonspuren und Bildräumen, Kunsthalle Herford, Herford, 1991. Pp. 42–44

Journals and Newspapers (Selected)
Sammelstelle in: Medien Kunst Interaktion: Media Art from 1980–1999 in Germany (CD-ROM), Vienna, 1999.
Wall Views in Pinhole Photography: Rediscovering a Historic Technique, Eric Renner (ed.), Focal Press, Cambridge, October 1999. Pp. 106–108
Wall Views, Portfolio Magazine, No. 13, Edinburgh, 1992. Pp. 22–23
Wall Views, Creative Camera, 1/1992, London, UK. Pp. 38–41
European Photography 45, Young European Photographers ’90, 1991. Pp. 34–35.
Jörg Boström: Die optische Hütte von Marcus Kaiser, Virtuelles Magazin 2000, 30/2005
Jens Lohwieser: Fotoskulptur – Die Stadt in der Hütte; Berliner Zeitung, 12 November 2003
Cathy Curtis: Peeping through Pinholes, Los Angeles Times, 21 February 1991
Nicole Donath: Verführung der Fotografie, Neue Westfälische Zeitung, 26 March 1992

Further information:
www.marcus-kaiser.de