About me

My name is Bernd Spyra (中文名字叫徐辨德), I’m a sinologist and photographer currently living and working in Hamburg, Germany. Here I carry out a DFG-funded postdoc project on the reception of Chinese popular prints (“nianhua”) in a transnational ethnological or folkloristic field during the first half of the 20th century. Broadly speaking, my research interests are the popular visual and material culture of 19th and 20th-century China, with a special focus on photography and printing.

In addition to research, I also practice photography, the results of which I want to present on this homepage.

My pursuit of photography follows three main lines: Photography on 35mm film which I use for day-to-day documentation of scenes, situations and characters I encounter, as well as family photography. For more concept-driven projects I don’t shy away from using digital cameras, which I also use to digitize my hand-developed films, resulting in a hybrid process. Finally, to give a material shape to my photographic output, besides organizing exhibitions of my photos, I regularly publish zines under the title reflex, which are available at Hamburg’s Nachladen.

A list of my more specific, topical (exhibition-)projects is given below, as well as in the menu of this homepage.

Exhibitions/Publications:

at the Nachladen in Sternstraße 17, Hamburg.

at the Nachladen in Sternstraße 17, Hamburg.

96 Photos of Small-Town Japan. Self-published.

at the Nachladen in Sternstraße 17, Hamburg.

at the Nachladen in Sternstraße 17, Hamburg.

at Asien-Afrika-Institut der Universität Hamburg.

In cooperation with:
Konfuzius-Institut an der Universität Hamburg e.V.
Hamburger Sinologische Gesellschaft e.V.

  •  “Kontraste”, September/October 2011

with Francoise Le Boulanger, at Künstlerhaus Bergedorf.

with Dorothea Ney, at Asien-Afrika-Institut der Universität Hamburg.