WALTER SCHELS 16° Fische . Retrospective

June 20 – September 2, 2026, C/O Berlin in the Amerika Haus, Berlin

Untitled, from the series Snapper, St. Mark‘s Square, Venice, 1974 © Walter Schels / Stiftung F.C. Gundlach

In Walter Schels’ work, photography becomes an act of quiet confrontation. His images do not simply describe their subjects; they hold them in a suspended state of attention. For his first Berlin retrospective, 16° Fische, C/O Berlin brings together more than three hundred works spanning almost seven decades, revealing both the well-known portraitist and the experimental artist behind the archive.

The selected image, Untitled, from the series Snapper, St. Mark’s Square, Venice, 1974, captures a moment that feels at once accidental and sharply composed. A man raises his camera in the middle of a public square, turning the gesture of looking into the true subject of the photograph. Schels observes the observer: the tourist, the amateur photographer, the passerby transformed into an emblem of visual hunger.

Courtesy of C/O Berlin in the Amerika Haus, Berlin.