The exhibition ‘Image and Power. Zeppelin Photography in Focus’, which will be shown at the Zeppelin Museum from 6 June 2025, is the first comprehensive examination of the zeppelin as a photographic motif. It thus sets a new starting point in the examination of the visual history of the airship and shows how the image of the zeppelin was used as a tool of political propaganda during the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and the Nazi dictatorship. As a symbol of the conquest of the skies, technological superiority, military power and global networking, it became the bearer of an imperial claim to power. Based on this targeted media staging, the Zeppelin Museum presents ‘Image and Power. Zeppelin Photography in Focus’, the Zeppelin Museum poses the highly topical question of the power of images.
Fig. above: Ebb.global & Neïl Beloufa, Models of AI-generated images based on a dataset of Zeppelin images from the Zeppelin Museum, in progress, 2024
Contemporary artistic positions take up the historical visual material and work with the museum’s image archive. The artists Aziza Kadyri, Christelle Oyiri and the collective Ebb.global & Neïl Beloufa deconstruct traditional narratives, question their visual language and figuratively turn the archive inside out. They thus call for a critical approach to the visual history of the zeppelin that opens up new perspectives.
In addition, the view of images as information carriers is sharpened. Their truthfulness as well as the methods and strategies of image manipulation are thematised. The aim of the museum’s educational work is to promote the media skills of visitors and to encourage a reflective approach to images.
The exhibition shows the unique collection of historical photographs from the Zeppelin Museum archive. It examines how images of the Zeppelin were used throughout the 20th century to convey ideological messages and influence public perception. Between 1900 and 1940, the zeppelin was stylised as a symbol of the conquest of the skies, military superiority, technical innovation and global networking. In all three political systems of its time – the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and the Nazi dictatorship – the image of the airship served as a powerful propaganda tool that supported the political goals of the respective governments and sought to win the population over to the vision of an aspiring, power-orientated nation. Image and power. In times of deepfakes and disinformation, Zeppelin Photography in Focus reveals the parallels between this systematic instrumentalisation of images and shows the continuity of strategic visualisations of power.
The exhibition is complemented by new works by the internationally active contemporary artists Aziza Kadyri, Christelle Oyiri and the Ebb.global & Neïl Beloufa collective. These works are created in dialogue with the Zeppelin Museum’s unique photo collection and open up new perspectives on it. Aziza Kadyri reinterprets the zeppelin as a mythical being. By using artificial intelligence (AI), she breaks away from Western visual regimes and eludes the interpretation of the zeppelin as a symbol of power, masculinity and progress. The collective Ebb.global & Neïl Beloufa dedicate themselves to investigating propagandistic logics by exposing the zeppelin as a propaganda machine. Their work uses AI as a tool to visually exaggerate and satirically scrutinise mechanisms of power. In an interactive installation, the audience is directly involved in this critical debate. Christelle Oyiri focusses on the staging of image and media power and examines the sensory overload of recipients through visual strategies that originate from pop culture. Her work also uses the Hindenburg disaster to thematise the dramatic effect of images that are simultaneously overwhelming in their aesthetics and their suggestive power. She thus raises the question of the responsibility of the media and their image production.
In dialogue with the historical exhibits, the artistic positions deconstruct visual strategies of domination, question the meaning of national symbols and open up the image archive to marginalised perspectives. Each of the works contributes to developing a differentiated understanding of image production and traditional image regimes and encourages us to critically question the meaning and instrumentalisation of images.
Image and Power not only offers an in-depth insight into the history of Zeppelin photography, but also calls for a reflection on today’s image culture and the power of visual media. It shows how images have always served as tools for exercising power – and how they still shape our perception and interpretation of the world today.
Exhibition concept
With Image and Power. Zeppelin Photography in Focus, the Zeppelin Museum illuminates various facets of the history of the zeppelin and its staging in photography in six chapters: overwhelming, instrumentalised, innovative, seductive, destructive and shattering. It focuses on technological, political and cultural aspects as well as the emotional dimension of emotionally charged images.
Overwhelming – The first zeppelin ascent in 1900 was celebrated as the symbolic beginning of a new era in which the zeppelin served as a projection screen for dreams of the future and technological utopias. In photography, the zeppelin was staged not only as a technical wonder, but also as a symbol of national and political power. The photographs, often deliberately manipulated, helped to spread the image of the zeppelin as superior technology and an unstoppable promise of the future. The artist Aziza Kadyri uses contemporary techniques to transform these historical representations into new visual worlds, which often also depict previously neglected female perspectives of zeppelin history.
Instrumentalised – From the German Empire onwards, zeppelins were used specifically for political propaganda. They served as symbols of national identity and were used in the German Empire, the Weimar Republic and National Socialism as an expression of strength and claim to power. Under National Socialism in particular, the zeppelin was used as part of the propaganda machinery to promote the image of a superior and progressive Germany, while at the same time concealing the regime’s policy of violence. The Ebb.global & Neïl Beloufa collective demonstrates how easily images can be propagandistically charged today in an AI experiment in which visitors can generate their own images and send them as postcards.
Innovative – The Zeppelin continued to develop throughout its 40-year history. Improvements and the testing of new technologies were documented in photographs that portrayed the Zeppelin as a symbol of progress. The press used these images to position the Zeppelin as an indispensable element of the future and to increase the market value of the Zeppelin Group.
Seductive – The world voyages and passenger flights of the interwar period stylised the zeppelin as a vision of a better, more peaceful future in which technology acted as a connecting element between nations. At the same time, its depiction as a ‘conqueror’ of distant countries and cultures reflected colonial and Eurocentric claims. Only recent approaches to image studies have allowed a critical reassessment of such image politics and the disclosure of their ideological framing.
Destructive – Even before they were actually used in war, zeppelins became symbols of technical and military superiority through images. Photographs staged them as menacing machines to intimidate the enemy and mobilise their own population. The few accessible images do not convey an experience of war, but rather an aesthetic of technology – distanced, dehumanised, ideologically charged.
Shattering – The crash of the Hindenburg in 1937 symbolised the end of the Zeppelin age. The images of the burning Hindenburg shaped global memory. The accident came to symbolise the failure of technology and power. In retrospect, it also acts as a counter-narrative – as an image of the loss of control and the collapse of a supposed claim to superiority. Christelle Oyiri’s work Sky is the Limit takes up the crash as a symbol of a failure of power politics and examines the transformation of technical symbols in collective perception.
Contemporary artistic positions
Aziza Kadyri’s work Lighter than the words we share (2025) reinterprets the story of the airship as a fable in the form of a sculptural installation. Inspired by the old Persian collection ‘Kalila wa-Dimna’, she creates a fictional narrative figure. Through its gaze, the zeppelin appears not as a technical masterpiece or symbol of power, but as a kind of mythical being. Using interactive tablets, visitors are immersed in imaginative visual worlds in which historical photographs from the Zeppelin Museum archive and non-Western visual and narrative traditions are linked by artificial intelligence. At the same time, the artist, who has Uzbek roots, emphasises the invisible work of women. In the Zeppelin Museum, she discovered photographs from the First World War showing seamstresses at Ballonhüllen GmbH. These images reminded Kadyri of Uzbek women textile workers: communal, in solidarity, yet historically invisible.
Aziza Kadyri (b. 1994) is a multidisciplinary artist who works with textiles, experimental costumes, performance and immersive technologies. In her projects, she deals with migration, identity, decolonisation, feminism and social (in)visibility. She represented Uzbekistan at the 60th Biennale di Venezia in 2024 with the project Don’t Miss the Cue. Her work has been shown at Artissima (Turin), KINDL (Berlin), Pushkin House (London), eastcontemporary (Milan), the Prague Quadrennial and the Athens Digital Arts Festival, among others.
Christelle Oyiri uses various aviation disasters to analyse the extent to which information and spectacle are inextricably interwoven today. For the artist, they symbolise a time of emotionally charged imagery in which the boundaries between reality and media staging are blurred. The Hindenburg disaster is considered one of the first media events to be received worldwide. The crash of the airship marks the beginning of an era in which images of catastrophe become mass entertainment. Oyiri’s film Sky is the Limit (2025) combines these catastrophes aesthetically and philosophically as demonstrations of technical superiority that end in tragedy. The narrator is a black child who questions the media construction of these events. The allusion to the airship from the film ‘Scarface’ with the slogan ‘The World Is Yours’ underlines the radical change in the meaning of technical developments: What once stood for Western progress and conquest becomes a symbol of failure – a moment in which rise and fall merge into one another.
Christelle Oyiri (b. 1992) is a Paris-based artist who uses an interdisciplinary practice to question common narratives. Her works combine pop culture, post-humanities and mythology with material-based research inspired by music, youth cultures and the African diaspora. Her works have been shown at the Palais de Tokyo, the Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Bard College and the Centre Pompidou, among others. She is active as a DJ and producer under the name CRYSTALLMESS.
With their work Auto-Promo (2025), the collective Ebb.global & Neïl Beloufa invite you to design your own propaganda or advertising postcards at a terminal. For this purpose, an AI was trained with historical image material from the Zeppelin Museum. Under the guidance of the visitors, it generates new visual worlds of the zeppelin – for example as a sustainable means of transport, interstellar missile or dystopian war machine. The AI reproduces visual patterns from the training data – including propagandistic stagings, imperial gaze regimes or depictions of technical superiority – without questioning their contexts. At a time when images are increasingly being generated by machines, the project poses the question of how AI influences our understanding of reality and history. With playful seriousness, the collective shows how technology and images shape narratives – and encourages us to use AI-generated content consciously and critically.
Neïl Beloufa (born 1985 in Paris) lives and works in Paris. His works at the interface of film, sculpture, installation and digital technology question social power structures, surveillance and identity. He uses aesthetics of internet culture, video games and political propaganda to visualise the logic of algorithmic systems. Beloufa has received numerous awards, including the Meurice Prize (2013) and the Audi Talent Award (2011). He was nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp (2015) and the Nam June Paik Award (2016). His works have been shown at MoMA (New York), Palais de Tokyo (Paris) and Hammer Museum (Los Angeles), among others, and are represented in renowned collections such as the Centre Pompidou (Paris) and the Julia Stoschek Collection (Düsseldorf & Berlin).
Ebb.global, co-founded by Neïl Beloufa and supported by an interdisciplinary team of artists, filmmakers, curators, researchers and developers, develops interactive, immersive and multimedia formats. The studio actively shapes new distribution models that reflect the changing values of our society. Ebb.global’s most recent projects include Pandemic Pandemonium at the Vienna Secession (2022), the Sahab Museum with the Hawaf Collective at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2024), La Ruée vers l’or with Atelier Médicis at Lafayette Anticipation, Paris (2024), Humanities at Kunsthalle Basel and the Renaissance Society, Chicago (2024), and Me Time at LUMA, Arles (2024-2025).
Educational mission: media competence
With the exhibition Image and Power, the Zeppelin Museum is pursuing its educational mission as a museum – and placing the promotion of media literacy at the centre of its educational work. At a time when everyone is constantly producing, distributing and manipulating images, a critical approach to media content is more important than ever. Media literacy means not only being able to read images, but also to reflect on them in their historical, technological and political context.
The museum therefore highlights key aspects of image power in four stations: from the history of photographic manipulation, technical principles and image development to questions of archiving and accessibility. The exhibition not only conveys knowledge, but also skills – such as recognising fakes and fake news, which can be experienced interactively with SWR’s ‘Fakefinder’.
The topic is particularly relevant due to its connection to the educational plans of the state of Baden-Württemberg and current social discourse surrounding artificial intelligence. With workshops in its own darkroom, inclusive stations for the visually impaired and an extended lecture programme, the Zeppelin Museum creates spaces for critical dialogue – and makes media and digital skills a tangible part of political education.
Chronology: The history of image manipulation
A three-part timeline leads through the history of photography, image manipulation and artificial intelligence. The station shows how technical developments have always influenced the perception of truth – from the beginnings of photography to classic image retouching and today’s deepfake technologies. Based on Wolfgang Kemp’s theory of photography, the chronology tells the history of photography as the history of its manipulation.
Workshop: How images are created – and manipulated
The ‘workshop’ offers a practical approach to photography and image processing. Visitors can get to know the basics of photographic techniques – for example by working in an analogue darkroom, where the image section or exposure can have a decisive influence on the image effect. Digital applications such as SWR’s ‘Fakefinder’ add interactive elements to the programme. Here, children, young people and adults learn to recognise manipulated images and question them critically.
The power of the archive: Who collects, organises – and decides?
An in-depth look at the archive as an instance of power: each exhibition chapter is supplemented by a reflective examination of the ‘archive’. The stations show how archives function as places of knowledge storage and structuring – and which social exclusions they inherently reproduce. At the same time, the archive also becomes visible as a potential place of resistance where alternative orders and narratives can emerge. The critical examination of the archive sensitises us to its role in the construction of history.
Inclusion and access: media skills for all
Accessibility and participation are at the centre of this station. Chapter images are made accessible for visually impaired people by means of tactile images, while stations with wheelchair access facilitate physical accessibility. The offer is supplemented by audio descriptions in the form of the accompanying podcast ‘Tell me what you see!’. For the Zeppelin Museum, media literacy also means creating access – regardless of physical ability.
Accompanying programme to the exhibition
As part of the OPEN HOUSE lecture series, which is taking place consistently online and on site for the first time, the focus will be on in-depth contributions on aspects of political education and artificial intelligence. Bernd Stiegler from the University of Konstanz will talk about the history of photomontage, Victoria Walden from the Landeck Digital Memory Lab and Leo Fischer from the Anne Frank Educational Centre will discuss AI and cultures of remembrance in an online discussion, and Anna Ehrenstein and Neïl Beloufa will talk about AI in art. Further discussions will focus on the power of images (with the Federal Agency for Civic Education) and the role of museums and AI (with Tina Lorenz from Hertzlab, ZKM, and Johannes Bernhardt from the University of Konstanz).
In October, the Friends of the Zeppelin Museum are presenting a five-part lecture series with an accompanying film matinée. The thematic focus is the 125th anniversary of the first ascent of LZ 1 on 2 July 1900.
FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT! In this interactive tour, participants learn all about image manipulation, from the beginnings of photography to modern techniques.
BRING LIGHT INTO THE DARKROOM! In this workshop, participants learn how to develop analogue black and white photos. Ideal for team outings or children’s birthday parties.
PICTURE STORIES This tour focuses on the stories behind the pictures and invites participants to share their own picture stories.
ESCAPE-ROOM The escape room offers puzzle fun for groups, families or friends. Playing time: 45 minutes, group size: 1-6 people.
WHEN?
Opening: Thursday, 05th June 2025, 6 pm
Exhibition dates: Friday, 6th June – Sunday, 12th April 2026
WHERE?
Zeppelin Museum
Seestraße 22
88045 Friedrichshafen
