KunstfoyerLehel
Ragnar Axelsson. Greenland
This exhibition has ended.
Sixty black-and-white photographs from over 40 years documenting Inuit hunters and families in Greenland's Arctic wilderness amid rapid climate change.
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In 1995 Ragnar Axelsson photographed the hunter Hjelmer Hammeken crossing the sea ice of Kangertittivaq on his way home, and he has kept photographing him for more than thirty years since. Hammeken reads the ice by its sound. What he hears lately, the Abendzeitung reports, is ice that breaks up in February instead of early summer.
The show is 60 black-and-white photographs in various sizes, many shot on film at minus 40 degrees: hunters, sled dogs, polar bears, fjords under the northern lights. The texts beside them are Axelsson's own, and you should read them. Peter Gratz of the Abendzeitung called the show artistically excellent and singled out those texts as the place where its quieter stories sit.
Entry is free with no booking, and the Kunstfoyer at Thierschplatz (U4/U5 Lehel) stays open until 20:00 on Fridays. On selected Fridays until 30 October, photo historian Hans-Michael Koetzle leads free tours from 18:00 to about 19:30, no registration needed.
Look for
Hjelmer Hammeken on the sea ice, 1995
The hunter Axelsson has followed for three decades, crossing frozen Kangertittivaq fjord on his way home.
Bear Tracks on the Sea Ice, 2010
A trail of polar bear prints across the ice, which the caption reads as both danger and livelihood for the hunters.
Sled dogs at Cape Tobin, 2025
A dog team the caption calls essential for survival this far north, where only two supply ships a year reach Scoresby Sound.
Polar Bear fleeing from Sled Dogs, 2026
One of the newest pictures in the show: a bear running from a dog team across the ice.
Dancing Northern Lights, Kangertittivaq Fjord, 2026
The aurora over the same fjord where Hammeken has hunted for decades, taken this year.
Good for
- Cheap Culture
- Evening Visits
- Going Solo
- Rainy Days
Skip if
You want colour: all 60 photographs are black and white.
On now nearby
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Image credits
6
- Liminal SpacesCourtesy of Bavarian National Museum
- StadtLandschaftCourtesy of Bavarian National Museum
- Museum Five ContinentsStrubbl / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Bavarian National MuseumRufus46, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Alpine MuseumBurkhard Mücke (Pimpinellus), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0
- Bavarian State Archaeological CollectionBurkhard Mücke / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 4.0