Tata Ronkholz was one of the first students in Bernd and Hilla Becher’s famous photography class at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. Her fellow students included Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff and Thomas Struth, all of whom became artists of world renown. Oddly enough Tata Ronkholz’ work is only now receiving the same international acclaim. The retrospective Designed World: Through the Eyes of Tata Ronkholz (1940–1997) is the first large-scale tribute to this many-sided artist.

Tata Ronkholz (1940–1997) initially studied at the Werkkunstschule in Krefeld and subsequently worked as an independent furniture designer. From 1978 to 1985 she studied photography at the Staatliche Kunstakademie Düsseldorf under Bernd Becher. There, alongside Volker Döhne, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Thomas Ruff, and Thomas Struth, she was among the first students of the Becher class, which later became legendary as the Becher School.

In 1985 she ended her work as a freelance documentary photographer and worked until 1995 as a photographer for a photo agency in Cologne. After her death in 1997, her oeuvre was preserved and has since been regarded as groundbreaking for the development of New Objectivity documentary photography.

The subjects she chose for her strict, constructivist photography were austere and unyielding. In addition to gates of industrial sites—photographed mainly in winter—drink halls, kiosks, and shop windows became the central themes of her images. Together with Thomas Struth, she began a collaborative project on Düsseldorf’s Rheinhafen, which was later acquired by the Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf.

The drink halls of the Rhineland and the Ruhr region formed her most extensive body of work; she was particularly interested in the fact that these motifs were both everyday and threatened by transience. Since 2018, the estate of Tata Ronkholz has been managed by VAN HAM Art Estate and academically overseen by a committee that includes, among others, Gabriele Conrath-Scholl, Head of the Photographische Sammlung / SK Stiftung Kultur; Stefan Gronert, Deputy Scientific Director of the Sprengel Museum Hannover; and Barbara Hofmann-Johnson of the Museum für Fotografie Braunschweig.

• Tata Ronkholz – Gestaltete Welt. Eine Retrospektive
• Published by Schirmer/Mosel Verlag
• Texts by Chihiro Minato, Sonia Voss
• hardcover
• 24.1 x 2.8 x 28.4 cm
• 119 B&W photographs
• 272 pages
• English, German