The municipal gallery ada in Meiningen, in cooperation with the city of Meiningen and the CAMERA WORK gallery, is presenting the exhibition “Children of the World” with around 80 photographs and posters by Thomas Billhardt from August 10 to September 29, 2024. The exhibition was curated by Thomas Billhardt and CAMERA WORK. It was based on the UNICEF exhibition of the same name, which was presented in New York and elsewhere in 1988.
Image above: © Thomas Billhardt, CAMERA WORK Gallery · Thomas Billhardt / Courtesy of CAMERA WORK GALLERY ·
On the occasion of a photo exhibition for Thomas Billhardt’s 50th birthday in the Palace of the Republic in 1987, Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, later Secretary-General of the United Nations, discovered Billhardt’s portraits of children. He put him in touch with UNICEF headquarters in Geneva and the photo exhibition “Children of the World” was presented there for the first time that same year.
The following year, after many years of international negotiations, the adoption of the “Convention on the Rights of the Child” by the United Nations General Assembly was imminent. In this context, over 40 works were exhibited at the UN headquarters in New York as well as in Düsseldorf and West Berlin. The exhibition was shown by the United Nations at 2,300 locations worldwide. The collaboration with UNICEF and Thomas Billhardt continued. In 1988, the photographer traveled to Southeast Asia for the first time on behalf of the children’s aid organization, followed by trips to the Philippines (2004), Indonesia (2008, 2009) and China (2009), where he documented the great misery of children in the slums. Thomas Billhardt’s reportages have often given children in places of war and in the face of poverty a voice and made their fate world-famous.
Photography played the main role for Thomas Billhardt (*1937 in Chemnitz) from an early age. At the age of 14, his mother, who also worked as a photographer, began to train him. He then studied at the College of Applied Arts in Magdeburg until 1957. He gained his first practical experience at the beginning of his career as a factory photographer at the opencast lignite mine in Großkayna, before being employed as a publishing photographer at the postcard publisher Bild und Heimat. At the same time, he began studying photography and photo design at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. His diploma thesis on Alexanderplatz in Berlin was to be a harbinger of the fact that he would return to this historic location again and again throughout his life.
During his studies in Leipzig, Thomas Billhardt became a member of the Association of German Journalists. In the years that followed, he worked as a freelance photographer – a privilege that he valued, as it allowed him to move freely in photographic terms and not be tied down to a contract. Thomas Billhardt was later hired as a working group leader at the German Advertising Agency. As a reportage photographer, Thomas Billhardt traveled to a total of over 50 countries – the pictures he took there were published worldwide. Thomas Billhardt’s immeasurable achievement in raising public awareness of war and the resulting suffering with his photographs from the war and crisis regions of the world is paramount. He became world-famous with his photographs of the Vietnam War in the 1960s. Numerous international exhibitions have paid tribute to this successful endeavor by Thomas Billhardt. His photographs are exhibited around the world as a testimony to the times and as an important part of German photographic history. In 1988, his works were part of the UNICEF exhibition Children of the World in New York. A few years later, UNICEF and Thomas Billhardt continued their collaboration, with Thomas Billhardt photographically accompanying several projects in Asia.
The life’s work of Thomas Billhardt until 1999 is owned by CAMERA WORK AG.
CAMERA WORK
The Berlin-based gallery CAMERA WORK was founded in 1997 and is now one of the world’s leading galleries for photographic art. Based on the historically influenced gallery name, the company has followed the philosophy from the outset of representing and exhibiting young contemporary artists alongside the most famous artists in the history of photography, such as Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Patrick Demarchelier, Peter Lindbergh, Helmut Newton, Irving Penn, Man Ray, Herb Ritts and Albert Watson, in order to manifest photographic art as an independent genre within the fine arts and to give space to new positions. In addition to fashion, nude and portrait photography, CAMERA WORK focuses on the areas of staged photography, architecture and still life. CAMERA WORK exclusively represents numerous renowned contemporary artists in Germany, Europe and worldwide, including Jean-BapYste Huynh, Russell James, Eugenio Recuenco, Martin Schoeller, Christian Tagliavini, Dean West and David Yarrow. In order to establish a selection of contemporary artists on the art market and include them in CAMERA WORK’s portfolio, CAMERA WORK ran the CWC GALLERY art gallery in Berlin from 2012 to 2019. CAMERA WORK is regularly represented at leading international art fairs, including Paris Photo, Zona Maco in Mexico City, Art Central Hong Kong and Photo London.
Since 2020, CAMERA WORK has been running the CAMERA WORK Virtual Gallery – an innovative and high-quality online gallery where art collectors and anyone interested in art can experience exclusive exhibitions: www.camerawork.de/virtualgallery.
Founded in 2001, CAMERA WORK AG owns one of the world’s most comprehensive and qualitatively significant privately owned collections of photographic art with numerous vintage works by the most renowned photographic artists from the 19th century to the present day. From 2006 to 2019, CAMERA WORK AG managed the museum THE KENNEDYS in Berlin.
WHEN?
Exhibition dates: Saturday, August 10 – Sunday, September 29, 2024
Opening hours: Wednesday – Sunday, public holiday, 2 – 7.30 pm
WHERE?
städtische Galerie ada
Bernhardtstraße 3
98617 Meiningen
