Heidi Specker
area: Photography & Visual Arts
Key Facts
nationality
Germanyarea
Photography & Visual Artsresidence
Berlinrecommending institution
Sternenpassagetime period
August 2025 - August 2025Heidi Specker, born 1962 in Damme (GER), lives in Berlin and teaches photography at the HGB, Leipzig. She works in genres. From architecture to interiors, portraits to current biographical themes.
"Speckergruppen" (1995) and "Im Garten" (2003) deal with architecture and urban nature.
"DAMME" (2020/22) with her homeland.
Specker refers to places that are associated with people: Giorgio de Chirico, Carlo Mollino in "TERMINI" (2010). Moï Ver in "Re-prise" (2016) and currently Aenne Biermann in Amnesia Gera.
Specker has presented her works in solo exhibitions at the Sprengel Museum Hannover, the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich and the Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, among others. In Austria at Fotohof Salzburg and Camera Austria, Graz. She publishes her groups of works in artist's books or cooperated in the book medium with "Help me I am blind" (2010, with Theo Deutinger), "3 Women" (2013, with Anna Viebrock) or "Le pigment de la lumière" (2015, with Olaf Nicolai).
Website: www.heidispecker.de
Instagram: @heidispecker
Heidi Specker has been working intensively with the photographic estate of Aenne Biermann for two years. The work "Amnesia Gera" was created as part of this research. Aenne Biermann, an important photographer of the New Objectivity movement, lived in Gera and died shortly before the National Socialists came to power. She left behind a body of work of around 4000 negatives, which her husband tried to save in Palestine. However, the estate was confiscated in Trieste and has been considered lost ever since.
Today, around 300 prints still exist and can be found in national and international museums and private collections. Biermann's grandson lives in Vienna and has a personal part of the estate, which Heidi Specker would like to photograph on site during her residency at MQ.
As confiscated objects have been returned to Vienna, Berlin and Salzburg, Specker is also planning photographic research at flea markets and antique dealers in these cities. In doing so, she will follow the traces of art theft and restitution.
Another central aspect of her project is the examination of provenance issues. To this end, she is planning in-depth research at the Austrian Commission for Provenance Research in Vienna.