Ramona Schacht: From the Bauhaus to Crimea. A Visual Exploration of Alfred Ehrhardt’s Tobacco Series

From 1954 to 1963, Ehrhardt produced numerous films and photographic works on commission for the tobacco company Reemtsma & Co. These works have remained largely underrecognized and stand in contrast to his well-known artistic photographs of nature and landscapes. The documents, which have rarely been exhibited, form the foundation for Leipzig-based artist Ramona Schacht’s (b. 1989) latest work: Photography’s Claim to Property. Images commissioned by Reemtsma. Schacht engages intensively with the working environments depicted in the images, examining which political, economic, and physical orders they reveal—and which remain concealed. Tobacco as a raw material is present throughout the exhibition in the form of plants grown by the artist herself.

Ehrhardt’s film Die Welt des Tabaks (The World of Tobacco) from 1956—together with photographs produced alongside it, which are also featured in the exhibition—documents various sites and stages of tobacco production. The journey leads from the traditional cultivation of tobacco plants in Macedonia, through the technological modernity of American factories, and finally to Hamburg, where the production capacity of the Reemtsma conglomerate is showcased.

Building on this, Schacht conducted extensive research in the Reemtsma photo archive as well as in other archives related to tobacco production from the 1920s to the 1950s, shifting the focus from individual documents to broader patterns of image organization.

She approaches this archival material in a decidedly fragmentary manner since no single image today is capable of conveying the entirety of historical reality. Rather than constructing a cohesive narrative, she focuses on recurring structural elements, including certain postures, lines of sight, distances, sequences, and bodily arrangements. Through a lens of social critique, she examines how women’s labor is simultaneously made visible and evaluated in Ehrhardt’s images.

Across all levels, the exhibition invites viewers to approach historical images not as neutral documents. It enables an ongoing engagement with the layers of history, labor, and cultural perception. Schacht’s portrayal of women’s labor in particular opens up new perspectives on often overlooked realities within processes of production, including precarious working conditions, global supply chains, and bodies controlled and made interchangeable by economic systems. Rather than merely looking back, her research is a precise attempt to identify structures within historical imagery whose effects continue to be felt today.

• Curated by Stefanie Regina Dietzel

Accompanying events:

Friday, September 11, 2026, 7 to 9 pm

Opening: The artist will be present

Thursday, September 24, 2026, 6pm

Guided tour of the exhibition with artist Ramona Schacht and curator Stefanie Regina Dietzel

Thursday, October 8, 2026, 7pm

In conjunction with the Literaturhaus der Fotografie series: »Need a Light?«, reading and discussion with Melanie Aufenvenne on the cultural history of smoking, moderated by Thomas Böhm (radioeins: Die Literaturagenten)

Sunday, October 11, 2026, 2pm

»Das neue Rauchen: Ein künstlerischer Blick auf die Gegenwart der Tabakindustrie«, talk with photographer Oliver Heise and Prof. Dr. Steffen Siegel, Professor of the Theory and History of Photography at Folkwang University of the Arts

Thursday, November 26, 2026, 7pm

»Labour as Image, Gender as Medium: Women's Work in the Industrial Archive, from the Filmfabrik Wolfen to Ramona Schacht«, slide presentation by Dr. Katerina Korola, Assistant Professor of Film & Media, University of California, Berkeley (in English)

Sunday, November 29, 2026, 4pm

Guided tour of the exhibition with artist Ramona Schacht and curator Stefanie Regina Dietzel, featuring a sound performance by Kyoco Taniyama