Armin Linke

Armin Linke is an artist working with photography and film whose practice examines these media, their technologies, narrative structures, and complicities within broader sociopolitical systems. His work considers how human beings (re-)design and use space and time as social forms, raising questions and propositions about planning for the future, the concealed interdependencies within collective design processes, and shifting sites of responsibility. Linke’s exhibition practice establishes performative frameworks in which different voices and methods converge. His body of work functions as a collection of tools for demystifying design strategies and visual languages. Drawing on his extensive photographic archive, he challenges conventional photographic practices and demonstrates that the photograph is not necessarily an endpoint but part of a broader process of research, interpretation, and display. Through collaborations with artists, curators, designers, architects, historians, philosophers, and scientists, the narratives and questions generated by his work extend across multiple interconnected fields, with particular attention to installation and modes of presentation. Linke is currently Professor of Photography at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich (AdBK), Guest Professor at ISIA Urbino, and Guest Artist at CERN in Geneva. He was previously a research affiliate in the MIT Visual Arts Program, Guest Professor at Università Iuav di Venezia, Professor of Photography at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design (HfG), and an artist-in-residence at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence. His installation Alpi, created with Piero Zanini, received the Special Prize for Best Work in the “Episodes” section at the 2004 Venice Architecture Biennale. Image Capital, developed with photography historian Estelle Blaschke, received the jury prize at the Kubus. Sparda Art Prize in 2019. Selected solo and collaborative exhibitions include Image Capital, with Estelle Blaschke, presented at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation in Eschborn, MAST in Bologna, and Museum Folkwang in Essen between 2022 and 2023; Earth Indices: Processing the Anthropocene, with Giulia Bruno, at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin in 2022; and Blind Sensorium at Matadero Madrid in 2021 and the Museo Archeologico Nazionale Domenico Ridola in Matera in 2019.