FRANKFURT.- From 4 September 2025, the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation presents a comprehensive retrospective of the work of Belgian artist Harry Gruyaert, a European pioneer of colour photography. Comprising around 120 images from the 1970s to the early 2000s, it is the most extensive presentation of Gruyaert's work in Germany to date. Alongside well-known photographs taken during his travels, the exhibition also features early black-and-white works from Gruyaert's native Belgium and images from his “Rivages” series.

Harry Gruyaert created most of his extensive body of work in countries such as Egypt, India, Morocco, the US, Russia, Spain or France. With his extraordinary sense for composing colour and space, he captures landscapes and urban scenes, emphasising contrasts: the impressive play of light and shadow in an airport terminal, the intense yellow of an American vintage car, the vibrant colours of Moroccan streets or the more muted tones of Belgian landscapes. Gruyaert discovers these mostly cheerful, occasionally melancholic splashes of colour even where they would go unnoticed by most passers-by and applies them to shape his motifs’ compositions in a fascinating way.

For one of his first assignments as a photographer, Gruyaert travelled to Morocco in 1969; a country that deeply fascinated him and where he spent several months on multiple occasions. It was particularly the sunlight, intensifying the landscapes’ bright colours, and the interplay of nature and architecture, which encouraged him to turn towards colour film. From then on, colour – which he had previously been using sparingly in Belgium – became the central design element in his work, which was still rather unusual in European artistic photography of the 1970s. In 1982, Gruyaert joined the renowned photo agency Magnum. Its assignments opened up new opportunities to travel the world. The various impressions gained through these trips fed into his unique visual language. Unlike many of his colleagues, Gruyaert acted less out of journalistic interest and more out of a desire to capture the sense of a place and the mood of a moment. He thus created images which go far beyond mere documentation and are characterised by a painterly, almost cinematic view of the world in his choice of visual space.

The exhibition “Harry Gruyaert. A World in Colour” was curated by Anne-Marie Beckmann, Director of the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, and Cornelia Siebert. It is a cooperation with Magnum Photos.

Harry Gruyaert was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1941. He studied photography and film in Brussels. After moving to Paris, he worked as a fashion photographer and met several photographers and directors whom he greatly admired. In 1982, Gruyaert became a member of the renowned photo agency Magnum Photos. He currently lives in Paris.