Nine-section exhibition showcases artists responding to Hermann’s photographs, keeping his archive alive.

On 23 February, MTU Gallery opens A Living Archive, an exhibition that reactivates the photographic legacy of Hermann Marbe—not as a static collection of images, but as a living, evolving body of work.

Hermann Marbe, who passed away in 2018, was a prolific and generous photographer whose practice was rooted in curiosity, attentiveness, and human connection. His photographs capture people, objects, and everyday environments with humour, tenderness, and a sharp eye for quiet detail. Thousands of his images—now being organised and released under Creative Commons licensing—are becoming freely accessible for public and creative use.

Rather than allowing this vast body of work to rest in storage, the Slow Camera Exchange (SCE) Team began developing Marbe’s photographic archive in January 2024 with a central question: how can an archive remain alive? A Living Archive is the answer, bringing artists, professors, writers, and other professionals to work and interact with the images, giving them different meanings and uses. This work has already begun.

Divided into nine sections, the exhibition presents works by multiple artists who engage directly with Marbe’s photographs. Some pieces feature his original images. Others respond through painting, writing, curation, and new photographic works. Many are collaborative or dialogical, treating the archive not as a fixed record of the past, but as a starting point for new creation.

Here, the archive becomes active—unfolding through use, care, reinterpretation, and exchange. Visitors can expect an exhibition that moves between past and present, between documentation and imagination. It offers a rare glimpse into an archive in motion: open, relational, and continually generating meaning.

Exhibition Details

Where: MTU Gallery, 46 Grand Parade, Cork
Opening Night: 23 February, 6pm
Exhibition runs: 24–26 February
Time: 10am–8pm daily
Free admission