participant observer

"How can you still be political after five o'clock? -We didn't play a game, we just lived it full time!" Leni Sinclair // Leni Sinclair is a photographer, unfortunately unknown to many in Europe. Born in 1940, she fled Königsberg with her family in 1945 and spent her childhood in Vahldorf near Magdeburg. In 1959 she emigrated to Detroit/USA with little more than a camera in her luggage. In 1964 she met her future husband John Sinclair, a poet, writer and manager of the rock band MC5, who was an influential and well-known voice of the radical political hippie movement. Through his environment, Leni Sinclair had friendly private access to musicians such as John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sun Ra, Iggy Pop, John Lennon, Yoko Ono and many others. From the mid-60s onwards, he took countless photographs of this music scene, photographic documents of major concerts such as Woodstock, as well as intimate insights into the lives of the stars. Sinclair's political initiation was rooted in Detroit's growing countercultural movement in the early 60s. In the 70s, she documented the decline of the city and its music scene. The city was one of the most important centres of "black" music at the time. Leni Sinclair's photographs show events that are far removed from the reality of our lives, both spatially and temporally. Yet they seem essential to our present. We see people who stand up for their individuality, for their personal freedom, for their rights, live and celebrate this in their everyday lives, and fight for it with consistency. We experience what a powerful force art is, and how little art and life can be separated. Leni Sinclair lives in Detroit/USA. She still maintains contact with Germany and Saxony-Anhalt.