German contemporary artist and photographer (born 1975)
Annette Kelm (born 1975 in Stuttgart, West Germany) is a German contemporary artist and photographer who is particularly known as a conceptual artist. Kelm uses medium or large format cameras in her work, creating still life and portraits. She favours using analog photography methods in her work.
Kelm explores ideas through "baffling narratives" which use typology, patterns and the intersection of design and technology. Her work has been inspired by traditional photography genres such as the still life, landscapes and portraits. The New York Times describes her work as playing with "watered-down semiotics."
Since 2019, Kelm has been working on the series Die Bücher (The Books), photographs of first editions of books that were banned, and in many cases publicly burned, under the Nazi regime. The project was first presented with 50 works in the exhibition Tell me yesterday tomorrow at the NS-Dokumentationszentrum in Munich in 2019 and was subsequently shown at the Salon Berlin of the Museum Frieder Burda in 2020. The complete series of around 100 works was exhibited for the first time at the Kunsthalle zu Kiel in 2022. Reviewing the Kiel exhibition, the taz wrote that Kelm restores dignity to the banned and burned books by photographing each cover individually.
Teaching
Kelm was a visiting professor of artistic photography at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in the winter semester of 2021. In 2025, she completed a term as substitute professor (Vertretungsprofessorin) in the photography class of the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf.
Exhibition History
MoMA PS1 (The Gold Standard, 10/29/2006 – 01/15/2007)
CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art in San Francisco (PASSENGERS: 1.6 ANNETTE KELM, 02/06/2008 – 03/01/2008)
