Volkmar Kühn

Over the last two years there have been several opportunities to photograph Volkmar Kühn and his wife Marita Kühn-Leihbecher.

Trostburg, South Tyrol (2021)

A highlight was the long journey from eastern Thuringia to South Tyrol in September 2021 to explore the venerable Trostburg for a potential exhibition. Four of us, that is, without Kuno. Their four-legged friend would have had a hard time fitting into the car and would probably not have enjoyed the trip very much.

We human beings, on the other hand, succeeded. The area is breathtaking, despite the fact that it seems to be heavily developed for tourism. The sun’s rays fell flatter than the slope on which the Trostburg is enthroned. As a chauffeur, I enjoyed the steep ascent. For the final sprint, we had to retract the side mirrors of the VW Caddy to ensure a streak-free passage through the castle gate. The first mountain track in my racing repertoire.

The mountains behind the castle, the green under the sky and Volkmar Kühn, his wife and other guests in the winding corridors provided photogenic material. However, it was the first snapshot that I will always remember and that gave me the most pleasure. To have captured the artist out of the context of his work and art and culture in general, but in an everyday situation like filling up the tank, was a treat.

Opening of the Mildenfurth Art Storage (2022)

The Mildenfurth Art Warehouse is both the end of an era and a new beginning. Due to the restrictions imposed by the nearby ruins of Mildenfurth Abbey, all the sculptures that had characterised the monastery grounds for decades had to give way to emptiness. This is unfortunate, as Volkmar Kühn spent a large part of his life maintaining the former monastery, including giving guided tours and organising readings, concerts and festivals, thus making a significant contribution to its fame.

The works of Volkmar Kühn and his wife Maria Kühn-Leihbecher will now be displayed in a former Mildenfurth granary. For the opening on 25 June 2022, I once again borrowed the wonderful Sony FE 50 mm F1.2 GM to capture a few moments of the day.

Website bildhauer-volkmar-kuehn.de

Shortly before Easter 2023, my father asked me to create a small website for Volkmar Kühn. “Little effort, please. Just some text and a photo. As simple as possible,” he said. Well, unsatisfactory as a requirement for me – how sustainable is this solution? With a static, “simple” page, the content would still have to be maintained manually. I would like to avoid that. It would be better if he could maintain the content himself.

So I used some of my free time over Easter to build a website that I’m happy with. I was able to implement a few design ideas that were lying around as small snippets of code in unordered bookmarks.

The site is open source and can be viewed on GitHub.