“Paint­ing invents, pho­to­graphy discovers” is one pop­u­lar way of dis­tin­guish­ing be­tween the two media. The cat­e­go­ries re­flect the con­vic­tion that pho­to­graphy is au­then­tic, while paint­ings seem to de­lib­er­ately play with il­lu­sion and re­al­i­ty. And yet, both arts of­fer us a glimpse of a strange, un­fath­om­able world.

In his “dream worlds”, Freddy Langer, cul­tur­al editor of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and a pas­sion­ate pho­to­grapher, opened a di­a­logue be­tween Neo Rauch’s paint­ings and pho­to­graphs show­ing worlds no less enig­mat­ic than those in Rauch’s large painted phan­tas­ma­go­rias. Ex­am­ples for the pho­to­graphic works jux­ta­posed to Rauch’s paint­ings in­cluded Roger Ballen, André Gelpke, Ralph Gibson, Duane Michals, Vera Lehndorff / Holger Trülzsch, and Arthur Tress, both from the HGN Collection and from pri­vate lenders.