Human Conditions 2026
From March 29, 2026, the Kunsthalle Rostock presents the exhibition Human Conditions with works by Berlin-based photographer Olaf Heine. It provides a comprehensive insight into the artist's multifaceted and now 30-year career and shows the full range of his photographic practice.
The photographer Olaf Heine is an essayist of our time, whose oeuvre is characterized by profoundly composed narration. He is internationally renowned for his enigmatic and detailed portraits of artists, musicians, actors and athletes, as well as for his impressive architecture and landscape photography.
Heine trained at the renowned Berlin Lette-Verein and earned his first spurs in the Berlin music scene of the post-reunification era. His international breakthrough came when he moved to Los Angeles in the late 1990s. Since then, he has created world-famous portraits of personalities such as Coldplay, U2, Nick Cave, Cate Blanchett, Jared Leto, Julian Schnabel, John Baldessari, Snoop Dogg, Anthony Kiedis and Iggy Pop.
His photographic work has been published on numerous album and magazine covers as well as in six photo books and is part of renowned public and private collections. Heine has also established himself as a director of award-winning music videos, short films and commercials. His aesthetics have had a decisive influence on the visual language of countless bands, including Die Ärzte and Rammstein, in the course of many years of collaboration.
"There is a certain something that I have encountered in young male artists from Berlin. A kind of inner toughness and a dogged determination to complete fully whatever it is they're doing - to go all the way. [...] Olaf is blessed with a clear and inescapable German eye. You better run, or fight back" - Iggy Pop "Man seems to find the highest fulfillment of his existence in the search for knowledge, in creativity, in communication and in communal interaction. This has defined my work over the last twenty years. I wanted to find out something about the human condition and summarize in a book when and in what these particularly creative people find their fulfillment," says Heine himself about the exhibition.
In addition to almost 200 photographic works, the Human Conditions exhibition will also include room installations, projections and video works. The accompanying monograph to the exhibition "Olaf Heine: Human Conditions" has been published by Prestel Verlag.
