A Journey at the Borders of Experimental Photography: Dörte Eißfeldt and the “Archipelago” Exhibition at C/O Berlin

One of Germany’s most influential experimental photographers, Dörte Eißfeldt (b. 1950), likens photography not to a tool for depicting the world, but to “whales capable of carrying entire islands,” placing the transformative power of the medium at the center of her practice. At C/O Berlin, the major institutional retrospective titled “Archipelago,” spanning nearly five decades of the artist’s work, opens to the public from 7 February to 10 June 2026. The exhibition creates an “archipelagic” field composed of meaning, memory, analogy, and fleeting impressions, offering a profound look into Eißfeldt’s multi-layered oeuvre that remains constantly open to reinterpretation.

In Eißfeldt’s lens, nothing is ever as it appears; the artist prefers to work with fragments of reality rather than its reflection. In her hands, photography becomes synonymous with a process of transformation. A snowball may melt in one frame only to turn into a petrified celestial body in the next; a knife edge can appear as a colossal megalith. Surfaces constantly shift: skin takes on a metallic quality in one moment, becoming fragile and porous in the next. Through these perceptual displacements, the artist questions the human body, the world around us, and the photographic medium itself, drawing nourishment from visual traditions of film, painting, and literature.

Eißfeldt’s methodology encompasses an experimental process that pushes the boundaries of conventional techniques. Inversion of positive and negative images, multiple exposures, and solarization form the cornerstones of her practice. Her works are often montages and hybrid series in which analog and digital processes intertwine. Moreover, by using unconventional support surfaces such as glass, nearly every piece in her oeuvre—even within a series—remains “one of a kind.” For the artist, every image has a body, a material support, and an individual “life” defined by paper, chemical processes, and traces of creation.

Trained in painting and film at the Hamburg University of Fine Arts (HFBK) in the early 1970s, Eißfeldt developed an expansive experimental photographic practice through her deep dialogue with the medium in the following decades. Her process-oriented and playful approach has established her as one of the pioneers of the “artistic research” tendency in contemporary art. Having taught as a professor at HBK Braunschweig for many years and left an indelible mark on new generations of artists over more than two decades, she continues to establish dynamic relationships between past and present by rediscovering old works from her archive and incorporating them into new projects.

Curated by Boaz Levin, “Dörte Eißfeldt . Archipelago” encompasses a wide selection ranging from previously unseen early works from the 1980s and 1990s to key pieces from her personal archive, large-format series, and unpublished sketches and notebooks. Honored with the prestigious Prix Viviane Esders in November 2025, this exhibition promises viewers an academically and aesthetically rich experience for those wishing to rethink the ontology of photography and the limits of perception.

Exhibition Information

Venue: C/O Berlin (Hardenbergstraße 22–24, 10623 Berlin)

Artist: Dörte Eißfeldt

Exhibition Title: Archipelago

Dates: 7 February – 10 June 2026

Curator: Boaz Levin