22 March 2024

Still open until Easter Monday

Exhibition: Keep a Stiff Upper Lip! Gundula Schulze Eldowy and Robert Frank

Book signings and guided tours with the artist
Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz


The exhibition centres on the encounter between two artistic figures from different worlds who were led by photography into an intense dialogue. Gundula Schulze Eldowy (b. 1954) had already made her mark in East Berlin with her multifaceted social documentary photographs and hard-hitting nude portraits. On the other side of the Iron Curtain was the Swiss American photographer and film-maker Robert Frank (1924–2019), whose now legendary 1958 photo book The Americans had presented a sobering counter-image to the American Dream. They met in East Berlin in 1985 and developed a lifelong friendship that crossed the wall and spanned continents. The exhibition reconstructs Schulze Eldowy’s career as she moved from East Berlin to New York and from straight photography to a poetic visual language that found expression in her blending of photography, film, painting and poetry, which she fused into an artistic cosmos. The exhibition presents some 230 photographs by Schulze Eldowy and Frank as well as films, letters, documents and diary entries, tracing a dialogue between the two artists.

At the end of the run Gundula Schulze Eldowy will sign the exhibition catalogue (€28, 236 pages, 180 photos) in the foyer of the Academy on Pariser Platz.

Exhibition details and dates

Keep a Stiff Upper Lip! Gundula Schulze Eldowy and Robert Frank
Exhibition until 1 April 2024

Akademie der Künste, Pariser Platz 4, 10117 Berlin
Opening times: Tue–Fri, 2–7 pm, Sat + Sun 11 am – 7 pm
Admission: €9/6, free for under-18s and on Tuesdays and the first Sunday of each month
Tickets: Tel. 030 200 57-1000, ticket@adk.de

Open on Good Friday and Easter Monday from 11 am – 7 pm, admission €9/6
Book signings with Gundula Schulze Eldowy: 24 and 31 March, 2–5 pm

Guided tours with Gundula Schulze Eldowy: 31 March and 1 April, 12 pm
Guided tours: 26 March, 5 pm, and 31 March, 12 pm

All tours €3 in addition to exhibition admission

Supported by a grant from the Capital Cultural Fund