Joachim Brohm

Joachim Brohm (born 1955, Dülken) is regarded as a pioneer of documentary and artistic colour photography in Germany. Even whilst studying at the Folkwang School in Essen from 1977 onwards under Otto Steinert and Michael Schmid, he consistently chose to work in colour.

When the first professional color laboratory at a German university was set up in 1979 by Prof. Erich vom Endt at the Folkwang School, Joachim Brohm, together with Knut Wolfgang Maron, Wendelin Bottländer, Andreas Grusky, Gosbert Adler and Volker Heinze, were intensively exploring the possibilities of new forms of expression through a documentary-artistic interpretation of color photography, moving away from the advertising aesthetics prevalent at the time. In this work, Brohm was particularly strongly influenced by the American ‘New Color Photography’ and the ‘New Topographics’ movements. A key theme in his series of works is his exploration of urbanity and the process of the temporal and sociological development of places.

Brohm was teaching at the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig until 2023.

Since 2010, filmmaker and photography curator Ralph Goertz has been following the artist as he moves between Essen, Leipzig and Berlin, and is set to release the first documentary film about Joachim Brohm in September 2026. The film traces almost all of his photographic projects since 1979 and offers an in-depth exploration of his artistic practice. With his subtle and muted colour palette, his elevated vantage point and his understated aesthetic of the unspectacular, Brohm has made a significant contribution to the recognition of photography as a medium within contemporary art.

The film project is due to be released in September 2026 under the title ‘Joachim Brohm. TRANSFORMATIONS. The photographic projects since 1979’.

"For me, the Ruhr was where my studies took me. I tried to familiarize myself with my new surroundings, to see where I had landed and check out the terrain. How do people behave here and what am I doing here anyway? It was definitely a process of intense self-questioning, a process of appropriating the place for myself."

(Joachim Brohm in an interview with Ralph Goertz, Leipzig, November 2018)