“Paragons/Afterimages” – this conceptual coupling refers both to correlations between images and to the production of images that refer back to pre-existing models and archetypes.

In the art academies and schools of applied arts in the 19th and early 20th centuries, photographs served as “models” or “paragons” and functioned as an independent and didactic class of images in their own right. Photographic reference material was an important resource in the creative practice of aspiring artists, and their use led to the creation of “afterimages” in art classes: paintings, sculptures, drawings and graphic.

The archives of the Berlin University of the Arts have preserved a valuable collection of photographic images used as teaching aids that dates back to the 1850s, having originally been established by the university’s predecessor institutions, the Royal Prussian Academy of the Arts and the School of Applied Arts, then part of the Kunstgewerbemuseum. With approximately 25,000 individual photographic prints and additional bundles and albums, the collection is unique in Germany. For a long time largely ignored, in recent years it has been more thoroughly catalogued and researched.