Photographs from the collection of Huis Marseille

In memory of Jos de Pont (1943-2024)

24 February 2024 - 26 May 2024

Jos de Pont, who died this year at the age of 80, was the co-founder and past board chair of De Pont Museum and Huis Marseille. With profound gratitude for everything he meant to this museum, and in cooperation with Huis Marseille, De Pont is now displaying works from the Düsseldorfer Photoschule which were collected and ultimately donated to Huis Marseille by Jos de Pont.

Jos de Pont and his siblings founded the Mr J.H. de Pont Foundation, named in honour of their father Jan. The Foundation decided that a portion of his legacy should be used to promote contemporary visual art. In 1992, this goal was realised when De Pont Museum opened its doors. Jos de Pont had a great love of photography and spearheaded the establishment of Huis Marseille Museum for Photography, which opened in his father’s former offices in Amsterdam in 1999.

The term Düsseldorfer Photoschule refers to the influential photographers who studied under Bernd (1931-2007) and Hilla Becher (1934-2015) in Düsseldorf from the late 1970s on. This married couple and artistic duo gained renown for their photographic series depicting industrial architecture such as water towers, lime kilns and mine shafts. From 1976 to 1996, Bernd Becher was a professor of photography at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the first academy to train photographers solely as artists. Here, the Becher’s formal and conceptual approach found fertile ground. Their first students – including Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth, whose work can be seen in the presentation  – incorporated their own visions and chose themes that are largely culturally determined: cityscapes, landscapes, portraits and interiors.