Nacktes Leben

The volume presents a selection from Martens' early work of the 1980s, which he created during his studies at the HGB and in the years that followed. Martens was one of the most important photographic artists of a new generation that disregarded the conventions and expectations of the time, instead exploring new ways of living and visual expression. Unlike the photographers of his generation, Martens worked in color and created situations and images with friends, acquaintances, and models, depicting individuals, couples, and groups. The settings included apartments, stairwells, vacant buildings, or outdoor locations, both day and night. Martens' staged images possessed a subversive power, overcoming the prevailing conditions that awaited transformation with pleasure and irritation. Together with his models, he unleashed a wild theater of images, a unique world of desire and whim, longing and joy, nudity and night, nonsense and meaning – in short: raw life.