Beate Knappe
Beate Knappe (b. 1950, Germany) has worked as a photographer since 1964. Her work centers on the visibility, dignity, and lived realities of women. Over six decades, she has created an extensive body of documentary and portrait photography that explores memory, identity, and the cultural construction of visibility. Today, her artistic practice is inseparable from the ongoing exploration of her own photographic archive. By revisiting images made across different decades, she reveals how photographs acquire new meanings over time and how archives themselves become spaces of artistic inquiry. As both photographer and archivist of her own life's work, she investigates photography as a medium of cultural memory, authorship, and historical reflection.
Germany
Germany
Woman working at a toll booth, USA, 1984.
From the series Always Smiling – Women in Retail, Germany, late 1980s.
From the series Women at Work – Woman working on an assembly line in a furniture factory, Germany, late 1980s.
From the series Women at Work – Portrait of a trade union secretary, Germany, late 1980s
Portrait of a steelworker during the steelworkers' strike, 1987.
Portrait of an anti-fascist demonstrator, 1983.
Portrait of a man inside the GUM department store, Moscow, 1987.
Portrait of my future husband, photographed in the late 1970s.
For more than sixty years, women have been at the center of my work.…
Fuck You Cancer…
Every portrait is also a self-portrait of the encounter.…
A portrait of dignity.…
Brussels, 1984.…
Women's Peace March, Brussels, 1984.…
International Women's Day, San Francisco, 1984.…
The joy of a bargain.…
One of my earliest self-portraits.…