The Ruhr Museum at the Zollverein UNESCO World Heritage Site is presenting an exhibition of works by the well-known documentary photographer Brigitte Kraemer for the first time.

From the early 1980s to the present day, photographer Brigitte Kraemer has documented everyday life and leisure time in the Ruhr region and elsewhere with unique empathy. Her subjects include camping, allotment gardens, men and cars, life on the canal, religious communities, the Oberhausen Peace Village, migration and women's refuges.

The Ruhr Museum was able to purchase her entire oeuvre in 2022 with the help of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation. The Ruhr Museum owns around 360,000 negatives and prints in black and white and color.

This exhibition with over 200 images marks the final part of a three-part series on female photographers who have worked and continue to work in the Ruhr 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. "Pictures on commission. Photographs by Ruth Hallensleben 1931-1973" is the second exhibition in the series. Her work has had a significant impact on the history of photography in the region. In September 2025, the show "So near - so far. Documentary photographs by 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 Center for Photography Essen.

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).