Axel Hoedt

From 15 November 2025 to 8 March 2026, the MEWO Kunsthalle (MEWO Art Gallery) is presenting a comprehensive exhibition of works by the London-based German photographer Axel Hoedt. The exhibition juxtaposes works from three decades. Here, previously unpublished abstract photographs can be found alongside widely published fashion shots and portraits, photographic research between editorials and documents of individual memory.

With his photographs printed in countless magazines, Hoedt made a significant contribution to the image of the young millennium; at the same time, however, he also created an extensive body of work without a client, much of which has never been seen in public. There are the photographs in the previously unpublished series "Cacti", which are reminiscent of microscopic images of cell divisions, or the series "Wish I heard voices", in which the "waste" of photographic production is transformed into abstract images and objects. The focus here is on an almost autonomous self-forming process that changes and destroys the traditional photographic image. The series "Eleonore" is named after Axel Hoedt's deceased aunt, whose flat became a time capsule of his childhood memories and family history. Here, private memories merge with elements of contemporary history to create an intimate portrait of a generation.

Probably the best-known series in this oeuvre to date are the photographs of masks and mask wearers at the Alemannic carnival. They were created in his exploration of the traditions of his home region and are characterised by the contradictory feelings of the foreign and the familiar, of returning home and the radical need for demarcation.

Closely related to these photographs of the cloaked and masked are the results of the now ten-year collaboration with the experimental fashion designer JJ Hudson (alias Dr. Noki), who himself appears exclusively in masks and who produces his garments purely from second-hand materials as a critique of the throwaway mentality and globalisation of the fashion industry. Here too, masks are an "expression of otherness, rejection, belonging and isolation".
The juxtaposition with numerous of his fashion photographs and portraits, including those of Sandra Hüller, Róisín Murphy and Sinéad O'Connor, takes place here for the first time in an exhibition context.

"... and sometimes there is a wind in the trees" deliberately breaks with serial structures and documents the continuous search in Axel Hoedt's artistic practice.

Axel Hoedt, born in 1966, grew up in Staufen im Breisgau and studied photo design at the University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld under Gottfried Jäger and Karl-Martin Holzhäuser. He has lived and worked as a photographer in London since 1999. Hoedt has been honoured several times: in 2010 he received the Gold Medal at the Lead Awards and in 2011 the Otto Steinert Prize of the German Photographic Society.

Last edited on 12.11.2025