Photographer and visual artist Johanna Diehl has been Professor of Photography at the Faculty of Design Würzburg since 2019.

Teaching:

At the heart of her teaching of photography is the view that images and image-making have the potential to recognize the world and that photography can be assumed to have its own form of thinking. And that, especially in times of ideological and populist escalation, it must always be about one’s own attitude, about an ethic of image-making, as well as about the “imposition” of not simplifying the complexity of reality, but conveying it in the image. In addition, the teaching of image competence, i.e. reading and analysing images and their power, knowledge of the distribution of images, especially with regard to AI and digitalization, is a central component of her teaching at the Faculty of Design. Johanna Diehl is a liaison lecturer for the German National Academic Foundation (Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes).

Artistic work:
How ideology and power are reflected in spaces and things is one of the questions that drives artist and photographer Johanna Diehl and that she investigates using photography and film. Her search for traces leads her along the traumas of European history, along political decisions and historical upheavals. Using a large-format camera, she brings ideology and propaganda, politics and failure together closely and ultimately in a complex picture of reality. She is usually concerned with the question of memory and identity in a contemporary Europe, while in more recent series, biographical references to her own family come to the fore.

CV and exhibitions:
Johanna Diehl studied photography and fine art at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig (HGB Leipzig) under Prof. Timm Rautert, Boris Mikhailov and as a master student under Prof. Tina Bara as well as at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts Paris under Christian Boltanski and Jean-Marc Bustamante. Her work has been shown in national and international exhibitions (Bucerius Kunst Forum Hamburg, Anderson Gallery Buffalo/NY, Pinakothek der Moderne Munich, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Zentrum für Kunst und Medien, Karlsruhe, Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, Akademie der Künste Berlin, Paris Photo/ Grand Palais, Paris, Kaunas Biennale, Lithuania, Haus am Waldsee Berlin, Casa di Goethe Rome) and is included in the collection of contemporary art of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Ann and Jürgen Wilde Foundation for Photography and Art Research, the DZ Bank Art Collection, the Augsburg Art Collections and Museums and the Bavarian State Painting Collections, Modern Art Collection in the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. Johanna Diehl has received numerous awards and grants, most recently a nomination for the Villa Aurora, Los Angeles, the working grant of the Stiftung Kunstfonds, Bonn, the Akademie Schloss Solitude, Stuttgart, the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung (EHF), the Robert-Bosch-Stiftung (Grenzgänger), the Deutsche Akademie Rom Villa Massimo (Casa Baldi), the Deutscher Fotobuchpreis silber, as well as the Hauptstadtkulturfonds. Her monographic publications include ‘Taubes Geäst’ (Spector Books Leipzig), ‘In den Falten das Eigentliche’ (Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König), ‘Eurotopians’ (with Niklas Maak),(HIRMER Verlag); ‘Ukraine Series’ (Sieveking Verlag), ‘Borgo. Romanità. Alleanza’ (Hatje Cantz), ‘Displace’ (Edition Fotohof).

Selection of previous teaching formats & academic activities:

‘Open Class: Body and Work’, ‘Open Class: Sampling, Identity, Appropriation’, ‘Fashion and Identity’, ‘(Re-)Thinking Photography: Narrative Strategies’, ‘Images in Times of Anger – Populism and Photography’ (Interdisciplinary Project Photography/Theory/Philosophy, in cooperation with Dr. Judith-Frederike Popp; ‘Linking Play and Work’, ‘Grid Square’ and others. In addition, Diehl led the RAY MASTERCLASS in 2021 as part of RAY 2021 IDEOLOGIEN (International Triennial of Artistic Photography in Frankfurt/Rhine-Main) with selected students from the Hochschule für Gestaltung Offenbach, the Hochschule Darmstadt, the Kunsthochschule Mainz and the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Städelschule Frankfurt/Main, and realized the exhibition “Essays of Undoing” at the Museum Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt with them. In the summer semester of 2022, Diehl and Dr. Judith-Frederike Popp organized the symposium “Taking Sides – Design and Art between Autonomy and Intervention” with international and national guests, as well as teachers and students of the Faculty of Design from aesthetic theory and practice.

Research semester 2024:

As part of her research semester in the USA in the summer semester of 2024, Diehl gave guest lectures at the School of the Arts Institute (SAIC) Chicago, the School of Visual Arts (SVA) New York, Kingborough Community College New York, the University at Buffalo, and the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University. Diehl was also a guest lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston/Cambridge in the Art, Culture and Technology program (ACT). She also researched and photographed in Nicosia, Athens, Sarajevo and Tbilisi as part of the research semester.

Current exhibitions:

2024 TBILISI PHOTOGRAPHY & MULTIMEDIA MUSEUM (TPMM), Georgia, EVROVIZION. Crossing stories and spaces

2024 CONTINUITÀ, Gallery Wilma Tolksdorf Frankfurt/Main

2024 Search for Traces, Hospitalhof Stuttgart

2024 Art Cologne, Booth Gallery Wilma Tolksdorf

2024 NIMAC, Nicosia Municipal Arts Center, Old Powerhouse,EVROVIZION. Crossing stories and spaces, Nicosia, Cyprus

Further information:
www.johannadiehl.com
www.wilmatolksdorf.de

Photo: ©Robert Schittko