MILLI BAU. 5000 km to Paris

May 5 to October 27, 2024 Partner project of RAY – Triennial of Photography 2024 A cooperation with the Weltkulturen Museum and the Archive of the City of Science Darmstadt

The exhibition at the TU Kunstforum and in Darmstadt's public space is the first of its kind to pay tribute to the work of journalist and photographer Milli Bau (*1906 Darmstadt – †2005 ibid.). Her impressive photographs, of which around 800 can be seen in the exhibition, bear witness to the more than 40 journeys Bau undertook from 1948 onwards, later as a feature journalist for Hamburg's »Welt« newspaper. They are a sign of cosmopolitanism and cultural understanding – and an impressive testimony to an emancipated, fearless and curious woman.

»Then I will become a migratory bird, a home nowhere, a person who is unstable and fleeting on earth.«

Milli Bau

In 1949, travel writer and photographer Emilie »Milli« Bau was the only woman to take part in a three-year expedition to South America and later traveled around the world alone in a converted VW bus. Her reports and photographs are an impressive testimony to an independent woman in Germany in the 1950s and beyond. She traveled to North Africa, the Middle East and East Asia, among other places. From 1967, she lived in Tehran for seven years. At the age of 88, she crossed Siberia. She captured all of these journeys in photographs with her Rolleiflex: insights into a world that was unknown in the West and no longer exists today.

From Milli Baus' extensive estate, with more than 6,000 slides and photographs, a concise and intimate exhibition of her travels and the woman behind the camera has been created. Julia Reichelt, Head of the TU Kunstforum, and Alice Pawlik, curator at the Weltkulturen Museum Frankfurt, as well as Kathrin Stößer as curatorial assistant have curated the exhibition in collaboration.

Exhibition in the Archive of the City of Science Darmstadt

Accompanying the exhibition at the Kunstforum der TU Darmstadt, the exhibition »Mit der Schreibmaschine um die Welt – Aus dem Nachlass von Milli Bau« on the life of Milli Bau can be seen in the city archive from June 4 to August 30, 2024.

Website of the city archive

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