Images from Ulrich Mack: Island People / Inselmenschen
Curated by Ulrich Mack, John Stomberg, and Graham Howe
Organized by Curatorial Assistance Traveling Exhibitions

Ulrich Mack: Island People / Inselmenschen From the preface for the book, “Island People” Half of the 146 images in this exhibition were made on Pellworm Island, off the northern coast of North Frisia in Germany, and the other half on Harkers Island, off the coast of North Carolina in the United States.

Mack began his career as a photojournalist and documentarian in the early 1960s after studying design with Alfred Mahlau at the Academy for Visual Arts in Hamburg,. Before leaving the school, Mack had taught himself the intricacies of photography which he applied to Mahlau’s exhortations to value perception over conception. Mack still strives to keep his style transparent to foster clear perception for himself and his audience.

When Mack decided to do a companion piece to his photo-essay on Pellworm, he was drawn to the southern United States, long associated with the birth and refinement of social documentary photography because of the Farm Security Administration and the publications of Walker Evans, Dorothy Lange and Margaret Bourke-White. He found the 2,200 residents of Harkers Island strikingly similar to the people of Pellworm. In fact, he found many equivalent personalities and occupations.

He eventually produced a radically designed dual volume that allows the reader to compare photographs from each island side by side – as is possible in the exhibition. As John Stomberg points out in the catalogue essay, “Mack posits that life experience does more to shape a person’s character than does national heritage, and he uses his photographic book as visual proof of his thesis.”


The insularity and small scale of these two island communities, and the time that Mack took to know the people and let them know him, allow for clearer observation of the connections between individuals and the collective society, and of the effects of change.