Simone Nieweg (born 1962) is a German

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

, living in Düsseldorf, who photographs agricultural landscapes in rural Germany. She has had solo exhibitions at The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television in Bradford, UK and at

Kunsthalle Bielefeld The Kunsthalle Bielefeld is a modern and contemporary art museum in Bielefeld, Germany. It was designed by Philip Johnson in 1968, and paid for by the businessman and art patron Rudolf August Oetker. Nieweg's work is held in the collections of the

Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis The Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis is an art museum for contemporary art, located in St. Louis, Missouri. Known informally as the CAM St. Louis, the museum is located at 3750 Washington Boulevard in the Grand Center Arts District. The buildin ...

Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography Huis Marseille, Museum for Photography is the oldest photography museum in Amsterdam, opened in 1999. Huis Marseille was the first photography museum in the Netherlands when it opened in 1999; the Nederlands Fotomuseum in Rotterdam, the Fotomuseu ...

, the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in New York,

Saint Louis Art Museum The Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM) is one of the principal U.S. art museums, with paintings, sculptures, cultural objects, and ancient masterpieces from all corners of the world. Its three-story building stands in Forest Park in St. Louis, Mi ...

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and was ...

and the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

Life and work

Nieweg was born in

Bielefeld Bielefeld () is a city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 341,755, it is also the most populous city in the administrative region (''Regierungsbezirk'') of Detmold and the ...

, Ostwestfalen-Lippe, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. She attended the

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Magdalena Jetelová, ...

between 1984 and 1990, where she studied under

Bernd Becher Bernd is a Low German short form of the given name Bernhard (English Bernard). List of persons with given name Bernd The following people share the name Bernd. *Bernd Brückler (born 1981), Austrian hockey player *Bernd Eichinger (1949–2011), ...

. She uses a

large format Large format refers to any imaging format of or larger. Large format is larger than "medium format", the or size of Hasselblad, Mamiya, Rollei, Kowa, and Pentax cameras (using 120- and 220-roll film), and much larger than the frame o ...

camera. Between 1986 and 2012, Nieweg explored "the German tradition of "Grabeland," a unique community gardening system practiced on the outskirts of urban centers." She "photographed the agricultural landscape found on the outskirts of towns and industrial areas in the Rühr and Lower Rhine. Plots of unused land, leased out for one year, are transformed into richly planted allotments, after which they are ploughed and left unseeded." Because of the temporary nature of the lease, tenants do not build permanent huts and stable sheds, as is usual in allotment gardens, but use meagre means to assemble small, wobbly sheds for equipment. "Nieweg photographs subjects such as gates, fields and allotments. All show individuality, reflecting the personality of their owners: sheds held together with wire and corrugated iron tacked haphazardly to wooden frames; rickety structures, that, despite their impermanence, have been carefully built." This work was published in the books ''Felder und Gärten'' (1996), ''Grabeland'' (2001), ''Landschaften und Gartenstücke'' (2002), and ''Nature Man-Made'' (2012).

Publications

Books of work by Nieweg

*''Felder und Gärten.'' , Münster, 1996, . With a text by Volker Kahmen. *''Grabeland.'' Bonn:

Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn The Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn, or LVR-LandesMuseum Bonn, is a museum in Bonn, Germany, run by the Rhineland Landscape Association. It is one of the oldest museums in the country. In 2003 it completed an extensive renovation. The museum has a n ...

, 2001. With a text by Christoph Schaden. *''Landschaften und Gartenstücke.''. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2002. . With texts by Els Barents, Saskia Asser and Andrea Domelse. *''Natur der Menschen''. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2012. With a text by Heinz Liesbrock. **''Nature Man-Made''. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2012. . *''Der Wald, Die Bäume, Das Licht: Photographien''. Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2016. .

Publications with contributions by Nieweg

*''Art Photography Now''. New York:

Aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An opt ...

, 2005. By Susan Bright. . *''The Düsseldorf School of Photography''. New York:

, 2010. Germany: Schirmer/Mosel, 2010. Edited by Stefan Gronert. Includes work by

Bernd and Hilla Becher Bernhard "Bernd" Becher (; 20 August 1931 – 22 June 2007), and Hilla Becher, née Wobeser (2 September 1934 – 10 October 2015), were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their ...

Laurenz Berges Laurenz Berges (born Cloppenburg, 1966) is a German photographer. He graduated from the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf as Master Student under Bernd Becher in 1996. Berges' work is held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the ...

Elger Esser Elger Esser (born 11 May 1967) is a German landscape photographer, living in Düsseldorf. "He is primarily associated with large-format images of European lowlands with his characteristic low horizon lines, pale luminous colours and vast skies". ...

Andreas Gursky Andreas Gursky (born 15 January 1955) is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. He is known for his Large format (photography), large format architecture and Landscape photography, landscape colour photogr ...

Candida Höfer Candida Höfer (born 4 February 1944) is a German photographer. She is a former student of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like other Becher students, Höfer's work is known for technical perfection and a strictly conceptual approach. From 1997 to 2000, ...

Axel Hütte Axel Hütte (born 1951) is a German photographer. He is considered one of main representatives of the Düsseldorf School of Photography. Biography Hütte was born in the German city of Essen in 1951. He studied photography in Düsseldorf Art A ...

, Nieweg,

Thomas Ruff Thomas Ruff (born 10 February 1958) is a German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. He has been described as "a master of edited and reimagined images". Ruff shares a studio on Düsseldorf's Hansaallee, with fellow German ...

Jörg Sasse Jörg Sasse (born 1962) is a German photographer. His work uses found images that are scanned, pixelated and manipulated. In 2003 Sasse won the Cologne Fine Art Award and in 2005 was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Priz ...

Thomas Struth Thomas Struth (born 11 October 1954) is a German photographer who is best known for his ''Museum Photographs'' series, family portraits and black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the 1970s. Struth lives ...

, and

Petra Wunderlich Petra ( ar, ٱلْبَتْرَاء, Al-Batrāʾ; grc, Πέτρα, "Rock", Nabataean: ), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu or Raqēmō, is an historic and archaeological city in southern Jordan. It is adjacent to the mountain of Jab ...

; a foreword by Lothar Schirmer, an essay by Gronert, and summary biographies, exhibition lists and bibliographies for each of the photographers. .

Collections

Nieweg's work is held in the following public collections: *

, St. Louis, Missouri *

, Amsterdam: 8 prints (as of December 2020) *

, New York: 6 prints (as of December 2020) *

, St. Louis, Missouri *

, San Francisco, California: 5 prints (as of December 2020) *

, London: 3 prints (as of December 2020)

Solo exhibitions

*''Landscapes and Gardens'', The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford, UK, 2004 *''Natur der Menschen'' = nature man-made, , Bottrop, Germany, 2012 *''Gärten/Felder'' = gardens/fields,

References

External links

Nieweg at Gallery Luisotti
{{DEFAULTSORT:Nieweg, Simone Landscape photographers German women photographers 20th-century German photographers 21st-century German photographers Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni People from Bielefeld Living people 1962 births 20th-century German women 21st-century German women