www.juliawinckler.com
Julia Winckler
Born Hanover, Germany
BA (Hons) Editorial Photography (Brighton)
MA Social Work (Toronto)
BA (Hons) Anthropology/African Studies (Toronto)
Julia Winckler is a senior lecturer in photography at the University of Brighton, UK, where she works in both the School of CMIS and the School of Arts and Communication. Her degrees in anthropology and African studies, social work and photography reflect her interdisciplinary research interests.
She has lived and exhibited work in Germany, France, Canada and the UK.
Recent solo exhibitions include Retracing Heinrich Barth (Brighton University 2007). There will be a major exhibition of this work, accompanied by a related events program at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, London, from 17 April – 21 June 2008. For more information please go to www.soas.ac.uk/gallery. A web-based version is accessible online at www.retracingheinrichbarth.co.uk
Other art projects include Traces at the Wiener Library (2003 London) and the Maison Heinrich Heine (2003 Paris), the Gedenkstätte Oberer Kuhberg (Ulm, 2002) and the Schlatterhaus Tübingen (2003) and Two Sisters at the Manx Museum (2004 Douglas) and the Mediatheque Francois Mitterand (Poitiers 2004). Leaving Atlantis (2003) (a collaboration with artist Nerea Martinez de Lecea) premiered at Random-Ize Taipei, Taiwan.
Julia is currently revisiting a little known 1929 pilgrimage (from Liverpool to Canada), My Canadian Pilgrimage, and working on a video installation and photographic series (to be completed in 2008, supported by the Ontario Council for the Arts).
Julia is an experienced arts facilitator, having worked as a community arts practitioner since 1993, first in Canada, then the UK, and, in 2005, in Niger, West Africa. In 2004 Julia (with Nerea Martinez de Lecea) was commissioned to develop and facilitate workshops for the Brighton Photography Biennial, which culminated in the book A country I always carry with me (2004) on the work of interpreters. Most recently, she has worked together with the Robert H.N. Ho Foundation in Hong Kong, China (2006 and 2007).
She has also had a long-standing interest in Phototherapy. The article "Acts of Embodiment: Collaborative Explorations in Phototherapy" (co-written with Stephanie Conway, Montreal) appeared in the book Wild Fire: Art as Activism (Sumach Press: Toronto, 2006, edited by Deborah Barndt). The book was a Finalist, in Foreword Magazine's 2006 Book of the Year Awards Popular Culture Category.
About Julia Winckler's work
Yvonne Cresswell, Curator of Social History at Manx National Heritage: 2004
“The Two Sisters exhibition is a fascinating example of something that we all do... we remember stories about our families that we were told when we were young. Then we try to imagine what life was really like for the people in those photographs, lives that were as rich and varied as our own.
Julia Winckler has taken that fascination with our personal history and the lives of our families and has succeeded in recreating and rediscovering the lives of two sisters from her own family and bringing them out of the faint shadows of the past into the 21st century.”
Simon Barrett, www.24hourmuseum.org.uk: 2004
“Ever looked at old family photographs and wondered what stories lie behind the faces? Julia Winckler's photographic exhibition sets out to do just that, focussing on the contrasting wartime memories and experiences of two sisters, the artist's grandmother Viktoria and her great aunt, Martha. Whilst Viktoria lived and worked in Berlin throughout the Second World War, her sister Martha was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man. The exhibition is a lovingly crafted artist's tribute to the lives of her relatives, as well as an intriguing history lesson on the subject of internment on the Isle of Man during the Second World War.”
Angela Robson, BBC journalist 2004
“Rummaging in the attic can sometimes unearth unusual discoveries. When the photographer, Julia Winckler moved into her great aunt's house she found recordings of her singing and photographs of her family that she'd never seen. She started to ask questions about what both her German grandmother and her great aunt did during the 2nd World War. The result is an exhibition at the Manx Museum on the Isle of Man and in Poitiers in France, which recreates the extraordinary lives of two sisters caught on different sides of the English Channel when war broke out. While her grandmother, Viktoria, married a soldier, her sister Martha, who had been living in England, was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man, where she met and fell in love with a Jewish refugee, Hugo. This is a fascinating project.”
Prof. Helene Roussel, ST Denis, Paris, on Traces 2003
“These images make visible two opposing and yet interdependent issues: on the one hand they show the effort to create a personal memory of this family’s history through remaining traces which still exist in the form of a few objects as well as in specific places. From the two small surviving photographs we travel to Krakow and Auschwitz, these are concrete traces, but they leave a lot of room for the imagination. On the other hand, the images indicate the fragmentary nature of these traces, and make visible the fundamental void left by the Shoah. They also indicate the limits of existing traces: the places evoked in the images taken in Poland bear witness to the absence of people who were lost in the Shoah as much as they speak about their former lives there.”
Prof. Marc Charpentier, University of Poitiers on Two Sisters 2004
“Wim Wenders, Jean-Michel Palmier and Julia Winckler have traversed Berlin and its past. They have searched for traces of a bygone time, their journeys and search in the footsteps of others have lead them to discover haunting memories. Their art, as a filmmaker, a writer, and a photographer respectively; and their knowledge, sensibilities and sometimes their imagination have allowed them to reconstitute, out of fragments an intimate as well as a collective memory.”
French commentary:
Professeur Helene Roussel, St. Denis, à la Maison Heinrich Heine, Paris:
“La démarche entreprise par Julia Winckler dans le project "Traces/Spuren", puis dans son projet photographique suivant, intitulé "Deux soeurs", me paraît très interessante à plusieurs titres.
Et d'abord pour la liaison qu'elle assume entre histoire individuelle et histoire collective: ne propose-t'elle pas de se constituer soi-même un rapport personnel, intime même, à cette histoire, par le biais de l'histoire familiale, qui certes, dans son cas, est riche et variée, mais don't tout un pan avait quasiment disparu dans la Shoah, sans presque laisser de trace palpable.
Ensuite par le mode particulier de redécouverte de traces auquel elle recourt. Il ne s'agissait pour elle ni de faire un travail de photographie documentaire, ni de combler, en imaginant complètement l'histoire de ce pan de famille, l'absence de ces personnes, encore renforcée après la guerre par le silence de son grand-oncle qui, y ayant échappé à la Shoah par l'exil, lui avait survécu - un silence caractéristique de beaucoup de survivants.
Pour Julia, il s'agissait d'abord de prendre la mesure de ce manque initial de traces, puis de rechercher des traces possibles, d'ordre très varié, en s'impliquant individuellement dans cette recherche, et d'en donner une interpretation toute personnelle, à travers de sa sensibilité d'artiste, de les recouvrer pour le present sans cesser de les metre à distance, de les considérer comme appartenant au passé. Et ces photos font apparaître, me semble-t-il, deux choses opposées et pourtant solidaires. D'une part, la demarche de constitution d'une mémoire personnelle de cette histoire par le biais des traces subsistant grace aux rares objets conservés, et sur les lieux concernés: depuis les deux seules petites photos jusau'a Cracovie et à Auschwitz, des traces concretes, mais qui laissent toute sa place à l'imagination. Et d'autre part, ces photos assument la constatation du caractère fragmentaire de ces traces, en faisant apparaître le béance fondamentale laissée jusque dans le present par le Shoah. Elles montrent également les limites de ces traces: les lieux évoqués dans les photos prises en Pologne témoignent autant de l'absence des personnes disparues dans le Shoah que de leur vie antérieure dans ces lieux.”
Professeur Marc Charpentier, Mediatheque Francois Mitterrand:
“Wim Wenders, Jean-Michel Palmier et Julia Winckler ont cheminé dans Berlin et son passé. A la recherche de traces d'un temps révolu, leurs itinéraires, ceux d'êtres chers ou ceux de personnages les ont conduits dans les lieux plus ou moins délaissés ou hantés par des souvenirs. Leur art, de cinéaste, d'écrivain ou de photographe, leurs connaissances, leurs sensibilité et parfois même leur imagination leur ont permis de reconstituter des fragments du passé et de laisser entrevoir des pans de mémoire intime et collective. Mais la reconstruction d'empreintes grandement effacées ou enfouies n'est pas le seul mérite des Ailes du désir, de Retour à Berlin ou de la série de photographie consacrées à Viktoria (la grand-mère de Julia). Les sentiments éprouvés par les auteurs, leurs désirs et leurs inquiétudes transparaissent et se devinent en surimpression...
Pour ce qui concerne Julia Winckler et Wim Wenders, leur séjour à Berlin signifie bien un retour au pays de leur enfance, mais il s'inscrit dans uen démarche qui procède d'une autre blessure. Il leur permet d'aborder la question de l'identité allemande une ou deux générations après la dictature nazie... Dans une génération, plus personne ne connaîtra, comme Julia, un parent ayant vécu dans la capitale du Troisième Reich. Dans deux générations, il n'y aura plus de témoins du Mur. Si la Gedächtniskirche et l'Anhalter Bahnhof subsistent, elles ne seriont plus que des ruines antiques sans grande signification pour les flâneurs. Peut-être auront elles d'ailleurs été remplacées par un centre commercial ou un immense parking. Pour les cinéphiles, les amateurs de littérature et de photos ainsi que pour les historiens il restera au moins trois productions artistiques, trios traces de traces de la mémoire de Berlin.”
