“Typologien” is an extensive study of twentieth-century German photography, curated by Susanne Pfeffer, art historian and director of the MUSEUM MMK FÜR MODERNE KUNST in Frankfurt. The project applies the principle of “typology,” which originated in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century botany to categorise and study plants and appeared in photography in the early 1900s, affirming itself in Germany throughout the twentieth century. Following a typological rather than a chronological order, the exhibition brings together more than 600 photographic works by 25 established and lesser-known artists, including Bernd and Hilla Becher, Sibylle Bergemann, Karl Blossfeldt, Ursula Böhmer, Christian Borchert, Margit Emmrich, Hans-Peter Feldmann, Isa Genzken, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Lotte Jacobi, Jochen Lempert, Simone Nieweg, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Heinrich Riebesehl, Thomas Ruff, August Sander, Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Thomas Struth, Wolfgang Tillmans, Rosemarie Trockel, Umbo and Marianne Wex. As Pfeffer writes, “only through juxtaposition and direct comparison is it possible to find out what is individual and what is universal, what is normative or real”: employing typologies in photography means affirming an equivalence between images and the absence of hierarchies among represented subjects, motifs, genres and sources, while operating in a paradoxical regime between systematic, objective recording and an individual, arbitrary, potentially subversive choice. With the spread of digital imagery, the concept of typology continues to be questioned and re-defined by contemporary photographers: “the Internet allows typologies to be created in a matter of seconds. And yet this is precisely when it seems important to take a closer look.”