The [un] fortunate man

This summer, Pennings Foundation will exhibit a selection from Jo Brunenberg's unique collection of male nudes.

Brunenberg is a graphic artist, photographer and collector. He collected photographic equipment early on, both cameras and 19th-century photographic processes. In 1982, at a photography fair in Cologne, he came across a photograph of two half-naked young men by Wilhelm von Gloeden. That marked the start of a new passion: collecting photography with the male nude as its theme. What attracted him to it was the beauty, the sensitivity, but also the vulnerability of the naked or semi-nude male body and its two-dimensional representation on photographic paper.

His collection depicts the history of the medium with its various photographic techniques, changing style and 'zeitgeist'. Due to changing morals, depictions of the male nude have been viewed very differently over time. From the prudish Victorian era of the late 19th century, the candid 1960s to a kind of 'new prudishness' of recent years.

Brunenberg collected work by 'big names' such as Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, Wilhelm von Gloeden, Horst P. Horst, Duane Michals, Arthur Tress, Paul de Nooijer, Robert Mapplethorpe, Paul Blanca, Michal Macku, Jan Saudek, Hans van Manen, Christian Vogt, Herb Rits, Joel Peter Witkin and Erwin Olaf, as well as work by lesser-known photographers. Collecting has brought him much. He built a personal relationship with a number of photographers. He bought work from galleries but also directly from the photographers he knew and also exchanged his own work with theirs.