BERLIN.- CHAUSSEE 36 Photography presents the group exhibition "ENCHANTING COLOUR", exploring the creative possibilities of colour photography from the 1940s to the present day.
Conceived around an unprecedented dialogue between seven major figures in the medium and the contemporary work of Berlin-based artist Marta Djourina, the exhibition examines the enchanting -almost magical- properties of colour and its capacity to transcend reality. On this occasion, a selection of iconic works from the Collection De Gambs, including prints never before shown to the public, will be unveiled across various genres: fashion, nude, and experimental photography.
Although colour photography is now part of our everyday lives, its recognition as an autonomous art form was one of the greatest challenges in the history of the medium. The exhibition retraces this epic journey through a wide variety of manipulation and printing techniques: hand colouring, dye transfers, carbon prints, multiple exposures in the darkroom, the use of coloured filters, and digital photograms.
At the heart of the exhibition lies the juxtaposition of seven masters of colour with the innovative work of Marta Djourina (*1991, Sofia). Created without a camera, directly in the darkroom through direct exposures of light sources onto light-sensitive paper, her abstract chromatic compositions explore light - and its capacity to generate colour. As the artist explains: "Rather than trying to control colour, I study how it emerges through the interaction of light, materials, chemistry, and bodily intervention."" Her unique prints inhabit space in a sculptural manner, combining a wide range of experimental processes: exposures on folded photo paper, collages of paper and textures, recordings of bioluminescence, and light drawings traced by choreographic gestures.
Confronted with her works, the masters of colour from the Collection De Gambs illustrate different approaches. As early as the 1940s-1950s, visionaries Erwin Blumenfeld and Ren Groebli fragmented bodies and faces in multiple exposures with bold fields of vivid colour, while Norman Parkinson revolutionised fashion photography through extensive use of colour outside the studio. Harold Edgerton, pioneer of high-speed stroboscopic photography, put colour in the service of his scientific and artistic research. Colour becomes emotional, dreamlike, or nostalgic in the hand-painted Colorscapes by Nobuyoshi Araki or the pastel-toned carbon prints by Sarah Moon. Finally, the digital turn is embodied by Thomas Ruff, who transposes the historical photogram into a virtual 3D darkroom creating a new spectrum of gradients.
Through this temporal dialogue, the exhibition offers a vibrant contemporary echo to historical experimental colour photography and interrogates the limits of the medium.
Marta Djourina (*1991, Sofia) studied at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and the Glasgow School of Art. Her work has been presented in numerous institutions, including the Berlinische Galerie, Sofia Arsenal – Museum of Contemporary Art, Haus am Kleistpark, the FeldbuschWiesnerRudolph gallery in Berlin, and CAN – Centre d’art Neuchtel (CH). The artist has received several prestigious awards and residencies, among them the BAZA Award for Contemporary Art (2021), the Eberhard Roters Scholarship from the Preuische Seehandlung Foundation awarded at the Berlinische Galerie (2020), an artist residency at the German Federal Foreign Office (2022), the Marianne Brandt Award for Photography (2022), and most recently the European Month of Photography Arendt Award (2025).
