Axel Hütte

German photographer Axel Hütte (born 1951), trained as part of the Düsseldorf School, travels around the world to find photographic subjects which allow him to explore the nature of perception. He has found his subjects in the metropolises of Las Vegas, New York, Tokyo and London, on Alpine glaciers and in the South American jungle. The resulting photographs feature unusual image structures and perceptional phenomena that surprise the viewer, straining the category of documentary photography. The manifestly real is suffused with an air of mystery and unreality in Hütte’s dimly lit landscapes, illuminated cities photographed with long exposures and scenes that blur the boundaries between architecture and landscape.

Night and Day presents around 80 large-format nocturnal and daytime pictures made between 1995 and 2017, including previously unpublished photographs taken in North America, alongside a selection of early works made before 1995.

A collection of previously unreleased photographs by the German artist shot over the past three years, from Venice to the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines. A photographer of the so-called Düsseldorf School, Axel Hutte trained under Bernd Becher with Thomas Struth, Thomas Ruff, Candida Hofer, and Andreas Gursky. This volume presents two series of photographs. The first illustrates the author’s journey from Germany to Italy, a sort of retracing of the nineteenth-century Grand Tour: from Alpine passes surrounded by snowy summits to Apennine peaks. The second explores Venice and the interiors of some of its best-known palazzi through color and black-and-white photographs.

Filippo Maggia is currently researcher at the Photography Department of the Royal College of Art, London. Since 2010, he has taught Photographic Documentation at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Catania (Sicily).