The Teutloff Collection

Analysis, inventory and restoration of a new collection for the CNA

The Centre national de l’audiovisuel (CNA) has recently acquired part of the photographic collection of Lutz Teutloff (*1938 - †2017) of Bielefeld, which he assembled under the title "The Contemporary Family of Man".

Today, "The Family of Man" is on the UNESCO World Documentary Heritage register and will go down in history as an extraordinarily ambitious project – both in terms of its scale and of the manner in which it is displayed. Ever since it was first created, this historic exhibition and Steichen's concept of mankind have inspired countless artists, curators, writers and collectors to respond to it and enter into dialogue with it. Among them was Lutz Teutloff, who created his own photographic collection in the same style: at around the start of the new millennium, he began building up a collection on the theme of the Conditio Humana which he later entitled "The Contemporary Family of Man". The Teutloff Collection includes notable works by internationally renowned artists of the last 50 years. Now a selection of 471 works of art, mainly photographs, by 195 artists has been put in the care of the CNA. Along with the collection of photographs, a library consisting of about 4000 volumes about the history of contemporary art and photography has also been handed over to the CNA.

The artists featured in the collection include Antoine d’Agata, Aziz+Cucher, Roger Ballen, Nina Berman, Valie Export, Thomas Florschütz, Jim Goldberg, Paul Graham, Pieter Hugo, Jürgen Klauke, Herlinde Koelbl, Susan Meiselas, Zanele Muholi, Michael Najjar, Gundula Schulze Eldowy, Andres Serrano, Miroslav Tichy, etc.

At the moment, the works are being inventoried and examined at the CNA in Dudelange. Each work is closely examined and goes through different stages, such as identification, status reporting, authentication, restoration and digitization. In parallel, research was conducted to develop an appropriate exhibition space to present the collection. The latter was finally found in the immediate vicinity of the Château de Clervaux, in the former Brasserie de Lannoy from the eighteenth century, which offers on three floors the ideal setting to create a dialogue between the two collections in a spatial context.

A feasibility study for transformation and renovation was first conducted in 2019 in collaboration with the Public Buildings Administration and a team of architects and engineers.

A brief history of the collection

Lutz Teutloff collected art throughout his life, so it is hard to put a date on exactly when he began collecting. Before he became an official art collector, he was a clothing manufacturer, entrepreneur, gallery-owner and exhibition organiser. Later, his job became a passion and his collection grew and changed continuously. A virtual museum and many partnerships with museums and curators enabled the general public to see the collection.

Right from the start, the collection focussed primarily on the media of photography and video art. In terms of subject matter, Teutloff was often interested in the human body and societal change. From the year 2000 onwards, more clearly defined themes emerged, under the general heading: People in all their facets from birth to death and beyond. Or in short: Conditio Humana. 

An old exhibition catalogue for The Family of Man finally inspired the idea of carrying on where Steichen had left off in 1955: visualising contemporary mankind as a family through the medium of photography – The Contemporary Family of Man. Teutloff then defined thematic criteria for his collecting activities, divided into the following categories: procreation/genesis, birth, mother and child, childhood, adolescence, couples, sexuality, beauty, tattoos, loneliness, emancipation, prostitution, family, gender, religion, injustice, war, beyond the norm, age, death, transformation… The timespan for the works in the collection ranges from 1968 to 2016.