“Melting Pott” by Till Brönner in the Silesian Museum in Katowice! (PHOTO)

2023-10-09 17:49:06

Essen/Katowice (ots) – The Ruhr area meets the Polish coalfield: 57 photographs, some of them large format, by the world-famous jazz musician Till Brönner have been on display in the Silesian museum since October 5th. They are an excerpt from a photographic report commissioned by the Brost Foundation from a year-long trip through the Ruhr area, in which the artist captured people, their surroundings and the industrial landscape.

What began in 2006 with portraits of his fellow musicians has continued to develop over the last few years. With the project “Melting Pott” star trumpeter To Brönner then expanded his photographic perspective considerably. The show, which was exhibited for the first time in 2019 at the MKM Museum Küppersmühle in Duisburg on behalf of the Brost Foundation, showed and portrayed the entire region – that Ruhr area, as a former coal mining center in which 18 million people now live, as an important center of industrial architecture and diverse coexistence in Germany. With the Silesian Museum A perfect exhibition location was found for the works, because the Ruh area and Upper Silesia share a common history as a mining region. The Pott, as the Ruhr area affectionately calls itself, is where the Polish heart beats in Germany.

“Experience Melting Pott in the Silesian Revier in Poland is a direct hit for this exhibition. It encounters almost identical structures and questions regarding the future, which ultimately must always be thought of across Europe and not just regionally,” says the artist Till Brönner following the vernissage. The exhibition will be on view until March 3, 2024. It was curated by Ewelina Niewiadomska and Bernd Heinrich Dinter. The photographs in the exhibition come from the Brost Foundation collection.

The photo exhibition gives visitors a look at a lively region in which industry played an important role until recently. Till Brönner does not shy away from emotional and moving images in his photographs. The visitor to the exhibition is confronted with a whole series of images that reflect the color of the region and evoke a variety of emotions – they all contribute to unifying the multifaceted nature of the “Melting Pott”. Even if Till Brönner’s photographic approach is very different in detail, a great sympathy for the Ruhr area and its people can be seen in all of the images. They do not require artificial staging or subsequent glossing over: “In this exhibition I’m not showing anything that doesn’t exist. I leave everything alone, otherwise I will transfigure something that should remain tangible.”

About Till Brönner

Inspired by the work of musician and fashion photographer William Claxton, shown in Julian Benedikt’s documentary “Jazz Seen”, Till Brönner (*1971) became increasingly aware of the obvious parallels between jazz and photography. After purchasing his first Leica M8 in 2009, the jazz musician initially portrayed his fellow musicians and only later ventured into portraits of artists outside his own circle – actors, athletes, writers, activists. Portraits are undoubtedly Brönner’s strength.

About the traveling exhibition “Melting Pott”

Created on behalf of the Brost Foundation To Brönner His first major museum exhibition as a photographer in 2019: He explored the Ruhr area with his camera for over a year and saw it as an enormously diverse and ambivalent region. Under the title “Melting Pott” The exhibition celebrated its premiere in the Küppersmühle Museum in Duisburg that same year. It showed Brönner’s personal view of people and identities, industry, architecture, natural and cultural landscapes, traffic and urban areas, chance encounters and familiar faces, as well as the colorful coexistence and coexistence of different nations and religions in Germany’s largest metropolitan area. The exhibition was then expanded and was initially shown in Potsdam in 2020 under the title “Heimat” and in Koblenz in 2021 under the name “Melting Pott Europe”.

It will now be presented in Katowice, Poland, from October 2023 to March 2024.

For everyone who likes to look at art from their sofa at home, the Brost Foundation has one from an art connoisseur Elke Heidenreich curated selection of works now also in our own digital museum “BrotherDreams”, displayed. Till Brönner’s “Melting Pott” is available online there for free, barrier-free and with no time limit.

The exhibition was created in collaboration with the Brost Foundation. According to the wishes of its founder Anneliese Brost, it supports projects in the areas of art and culture, youth and elderly care, education and charitable work with a particular focus on the Ruhr area. Valuable impulses come from Anneliese and Erich Brost’s homeland, strengthening the identity of the Ruhr area and spreading its charisma far beyond its borders.

Brost Foundation presents “Melting Pott” in Katowice – accompanying publication by the Brost Academy deepens the connection between the two regions in their mining history

As part of its publication series, the Brost Academy published a book in August 2023 entitled “Underground, across borders – connections between the Ruhr area and the Polish coal region”, which deals with the similarities between the Polish coal region and those of the Ruhr area. Editor, President of the Brost Academy and Chairman of the Board of the Brost Foundation, Prof. Bodo Hombach writes in his foreword: “Immigration was important reinforcement. Every buddy in the Ruhr region developed a minimal vocabulary of Polish. Underground, it was important to communicate without detours or embellishments. This not only ensured that things ran smoothly. It might can even save lives in a sudden dangerous situation. “Gimma Mottek” was better than “Pass me the hammer please!” The contributions in this book are illustrated with a selection of images from Till Brönner’s “Melting Pott”.

The connection between the Ruhr area and Poland is a long-standing one and some of the similarities between the regions still exist today.

Read the entire publication online at:

Questions & Contact:

Anna-Lea Loges
Project and communication consultant

Brost Foundation, Huyssenallee 11, 45128 Essen

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Mobil: +49 (0)1520.300 55 62

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