Photography Collection

The Photographic Collection of the Museum Folkwang was established as an independent department in 1979. It was based on the collection Otto Steinert had bought together between 1959 and 1978. Today the Photographic Collection comprises nearly 60,000 photographs, the vast majority of which are vintage prints, by 1,300 photographers from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. It encompasses the estates of Helmar Lerski, Germaine Krull, Otto Steinert and the Peter Keetman archive.