Tata Ronkholz

Opening: Saturday, 17 May 2025, 3-6pm

Introduction: Klaus Honnef

Zander Galerie is delighted to present the exhibition Trinkhallen, featuring the most re-nowned series by German photographer Tata Ronkholz. With clear formal rigor and a distinctive sense for the documentary moment, Ronkholz, a former student of Bernd Becher, produced a unique portrait of a dwindling phenomenon in cities in the West of Germany known as Büdchen, Kiosk, or Trinkhalle.

The photographs from the series were taken in Cologne, Düsseldorf and other cities in the Rhineland and Ruhr region between the late 1970s and the early 1980s. The works on view in the exhibition, mainly in black and white and occasionally also in colour, are vintage prints from the artist’s estate. The photographs of these familiar neighbourhood meeting spots were not intended as an architectural or social study, but as a documentation of their everyday presence in the urban environment. “I wasn’t interested in the social aspect or the design, but I felt drawn to everyday life. I wanted to show the Büdchen around the corner in all its endearing qualities,” the artist herself commented on the central interest of her series.

Tata Ronkholz (1940-1997) initially studied architecture and interior design and created numerous constructivist pieces of furniture. From 1978, she was one of Bernd Becher’s first students – together with Candida Höfer, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth – at the Department of Artistic Photography at the Düsseldorf Art Academy. Inspired by her time at the academy, Ronkholz’s own visual language is characterised by precise composition, formal reduction, frontal perspectives and her deep-rooted interest in capturing an everyday world that started to gradually disappear. In addition to the Trinkhallen, her oeuvre also includes series on small shops, industrial gates and a series in collaboration with Thomas Struth on the Rhine harbour in Düsseldorf. The entire spectrum of Ronkholz’s work can currently be seen in the first comprehensive retrospective at the Photographic Collection of the SK Stiftung Kultur in Cologne.

Works by Tata Ronkholz are in the collections of LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn; Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf; Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main; Museum Kurhaus Kleve; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Photographische Sammlung/SK Stiftung Kultur, Cologne; MAST Foundation, Bologna, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

The exhibition at Zander Galerie is accompanied by the publication Tata Ronkholz: Trinkhallen, published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther und Franz König, Cologne, in co-operation with VAN HAM Art Estate, with an essay by Andreas Rossmann.

Press release (German)