As a pioneer of industrial photography and an important commissioned photographer, Ruth Hallensleben (1898-1977) was known for her precise staging and idealizing depictions. Her work as a freelance photographer began in the 1930s. This was followed by a career in National Socialist Germany and her commission business also flourished in the 1950s and 1960s. Hallensleben was not only a successful industrial photographer, but also worked in the fields of landscape, travel, portraiture and advertising.

The Ruhr Museum, which owns the majority of Hallensleben's photographic estate with around 38,000 negatives and 1,500 prints, is now showing more than 120 images of the important photographer from all genres of her multifaceted work and from all phases of her life's work for the first time. "The images reflect over 40 years of German economic history under two political systems," explains museum director Prof. Heinrich Theodor Grütter. "Her photographs were purely commissioned works in which she precisely staged companies and their surroundings as idealized, functioning worlds. Her primary goal was always to fulfill the wishes of her clients - regardless of the political circumstances," Grütter continues. Thanks to their clear depiction, Hallensleben's images are now classics of industrial photography. The reception of her photographs in company archives, collections, museums and the art trade underlines the great importance of her work.

The gallery exhibition shows more than 120 photographs as original prints and newly produced reprints as well as in monitor projections and in company publications, which cover the entire spectrum of Hallensleben's work and thus present the estate in all its complexity for the first time. The 14 chapters include photographs from the fields of industry, landscape, portrait, travel and advertising.

The unifying element of Hallensleben's work is the commissioned photographs. They shaped all phases of her professional life, secured her income and made it possible to set up her company "Lichtbildwerkstatt Ruth Hallensleben" with salaried assistants and female trainees. Ruth Hallensleben built up her career in National Socialist Germany from the 1930s onwards. She photographed for companies and National Socialist organizations until shortly before the end of the war. In all her commissioned works, she fulfilled the wishes of her clients - in line with the ideological framework of the Nazi state.

The works for her most important clients from the Ruhr region and beyond, for whom Hallensleben photographed before, during and after the war, form the focus of the exhibition. One chapter shows several of her photographs published in the magazine Das Werk. Monatsschrift der "Vereinigte Stahlwerke Aktiengesellschaft", whose editor Wilhelm Debus was probably the most important person for Hallensleben's career. He arranged for some of her photographs to be printed during her training and regularly commissioned them from 1935 onwards. This close collaboration continued after the Second World War, after Debus was once again appointed editor of the magazine Das Werk, now published by Gelsenkirchener Bergwerks-AG, in 1951.

Other clients and companions include Bergische Achsenfabrik / Fritz Kotz, Hoppenstedt Verlag and Siegener AG. As a commissioned photographer, Ruth Hallensleben carried out assignments in a wide variety of industries, in politics, for publishing houses, magazines and newspapers. Photographs from these areas are shown in the exhibition as examples: Work at the suitcase factory Gebr. Lehmann in Neukirch, the manufacture of Rolleiflex cameras at the Franke & Heidecke company in Braunschweig and photographs of members of the National Socialist Women's Association.

In her commissions for the armaments industry, Hallensleben documents the production of bombs at the Meer machine factory in Mönchengladbach (1941) and the manufacture of armored vehicles at the Thyssen plant of Deutsche Röhrenwerke AG in Mülheim an der Ruhr (1943).

Other chapters show examples of photo reportages, including the reconstruction of Cologne Cathedral, commissions for the theater, product images for advertisements, product catalogs and company brochures, as well as travel photographs. The photographs selected by Hallensleben himself for group and solo exhibitions are also part of the exhibition.

Ruth Hallensleben, born on 1 June 1898 in Cologne, is Germany's best-known industrial photographer and was known for her precise and idealizing portraits. Ruth Anna Maria Ottilia Martha Hallensleben only began her training as a photographer in 1930. She quickly made a career for herself in National Socialist Germany. Her business also flourished in the 1950s and 1960s.

Stefanie Grebe, Head of the Photographic Collection at the Ruhr Museum, explains: "For a woman at that time, Ruth Hallensleben was exceptional in many respects: To be successful as an industrial photographer for numerous companies and also in the purely male-dominated heavy industry was extraordinary."

The impressive number of commissions for numerous companies, associations, organizations and institutions from a wide range of industries illustrates Ruth Hallensleben's self-image: she saw herself as a style-defining commissioned photographer who did not pursue her own themes and did not see herself as an artist, but as a craftswoman. Hallensleben covered a broad spectrum with her commissioned photography for industry and other manufacturing trades. Her motifs were designed to portray companies as exemplary and their products as high-quality. The visual language and staging strategies in many of her commissions were similar - in keeping with Hallensleben's photographic motto "The impression is more genuine when you pose": Close-ups of people concentrating on their work, often with products that appear to be handcrafted, romanticized overall views of factory halls penetrated by rays of light, scenes of quality controls or master-apprentice encounters. Other frequent motifs were close-ups of hands, neatly arranged groups - also under swastikas or Hitler busts, children in company welfare facilities or managers bending over documents.

Ruth Hallensleben's extremely concise way of photographing in order to professionally realize the wishes of her clients made her a respected and busy photographer.

Her stylistic devices were predominantly documentary and her staging was at the same time idealizing. Her images conveyed an idealized world and a host of virtues such as order, cleanliness, precision and efficiency, which were appropriated by National Socialist ideology. In this way, the photographer also conveyed the values of National Socialist society. It is not possible to give a clear answer as to what her position on National Socialism was, as there are no corresponding statements or records by Hallensleben. Her stylistic devices became her model for success. She remained true to them after the war until the 1960s, when the industrial world of work changed fundamentally due to increasing automation. As the manual nature of work dwindled, the photographic approach had to be adapted. Although Hallensleben emphasized that she had always adapted to the new requirements, her later works show that she was only able to keep pace with these changes to a limited extent. New staging strategies that could convincingly depict modern industrial operations failed to materialize. Her photographs from this period often convey emptiness, coldness and monotony - possibly also as an indication of the working conditions at the time. Nevertheless, Hallensleben continued to be in demand, as her work met the requirements of her clients despite these developments. However, health problems and the transformation of the economy led to a decline in commissions in the 1960s. After her last industrial commission in 1972, she gradually withdrew from photography. In 1973, she closed her business and was made an honorary member of the Society of German Photographers (GDL). Ruth Hallensleben died in Cologne on April 28, 1977.

The estate of Ruth Hallensleben with around 40,000 negatives and prints is one of the most important holdings in the Ruhr Museum's photo archive. The acquisition was initiated by Prof Ute Eskildsen, then head of the Museum Folkwang's photography collection, who wanted to secure specific estates relating to industrial history and the Ruhr region. Ruth Hallensleben was known for her work in industrial photography and a large proportion of her customers came from the Ruhr region.
After negotiations with Hallensleben's niece and assistant Lotte Laska, the estate was purchased by the Kulturstiftung Ruhr for 145,000 Deutschmarks in 1986 and became part of the Ruhrlandmuseum's photo archive in 1989. The agreement on the sale ensured that the acquired archive would remain the most comprehensive documentation of her work.
With the estate, the Ruhr Museum preserves an important piece of German photographic history and shows the extraordinary achievement of a photographer who impresses with her craftsmanship and her specific visual language in the field of corporate and industrial photography.

"Pictures on commission. Photographs by Ruth Hallensleben 1931-1973" is the second exhibition in a three-part series on female photographers who were and are active in the Ruhr region. Their work has had a significant impact on the history of photography in the region. It began in 2023 with the exhibition "On the road with Marga Kingler. Press Photographer in the Ruhr Area", which showed an impressive panorama of urban life from 1951-1991. In September 2025, an exhibition with works by documentary photographer Brigitte Kraemer will conclude the series. "We are looking back on a century of female photographers in the Ruhr region," says Prof. Heinrich Theodor Grütter. "With this exhibition series, we are expanding the spectrum of photography from the Ruhr region, both thematically and formally, and showing the immense breadth and diversity of the Ruhr Museum's photographic collection," Grütter continues. The series underlines the importance of photography in the Ruhr region and especially in Essen, where several renowned institutions - the Museum Folkwang, the Krupp Historical Archive, the Folkwang University of the Arts and the Ruhr Museum - have joined forces to form the Essen Center for Photography.

Since 2010, the series has been preceded by exhibitions at the Ruhr Museum on classics of Ruhr area photography such as "Heinrich Hauser - Schwarzes Revier" (2010), "Chargesheimer. The Discovery of the Ruhr" (2014/15), "Erich Grisar. Ruhr Area Photographs 1928-1933" (2016), "Josef Stoffels. Coal Mines - Photographs from the Ruhr Area" (2018) and finally "Albert Renger-Patzsch. The Ruhr Area Photographs" (2018/19).

An accompanying program will take place during the exhibition. In addition to various guided tours, there will be an exhibition rally for families with children. On 23.5.2025 there will be a symposium on the topic "Ruth Hallensleben. Commissioned Photography in the Context of Collections, Politics and Women's Studies". The symposium is intended to promote academic exchange and is aimed at all professionals working with photography in the fields of the history of photography, in particular commissioned photography, photography under National Socialism and women's studies. It is also aimed at staff from institutions such as company archives, museums and public and private collections that own photographs by Ruth Hallensleben. Further information can be found under Hallensleben symposium.

The events accompanying the exhibition can be found in the:

Calendar

During a tour of the exhibition for teachers, staff from both the exhibition team and the Education and Outreach department will explain the concept, themes and guided tours for school classes. In the guided tours for school classes, pupils learn the background to individual photographs as well as biographical information about the photographer Ruth Hallensleben. In small groups, they then turn to a selected photograph with predetermined questions