Hildegard Ochse


Hildegard Ochse was a German photographer.

Life and work

Hildegard Maria Helene Ochse was born at home in Bad Salzuflen, Westphalia on December 7, 1935, the daughter of Dr. phil. Emma Maria Römer-Krusemeyer and Arthur Peter Maria Römer. At age sixteen in the summer of 1952, Hildegard left in the summer the provincial Bad Salzuflen. She traveled as an exchange student on scholarship to Rochester. Once in Rochester, she lived with a host family and attended the Catholic Nazareth Academy. Her host father was employed by Eastman Kodak as a senior chemist in the development department and his knowledge of photography became an important influence for Hildegard. In the US, she produced her first portraits as well as remarkable street and architectural photographs. After a year in 1953, Hildegard returned to Bad Salzuflen with her high school diploma. In 1955 she passed her German high exams with honors and began studying romance languages and art history at the University of Freiburg in Breisgau with Dr. Hugo Friedrich and Dr. Kurt Bauch, whose areas of research were among others Dutch painting and Rembrandt. During her studies, she met her future husband Horst Ochse at the university in Freiburg. In 1957 she received a scholarship to Aix-en-Provence in southern France and lived with a photographer in modest conditions. She was impressed by the landscape and the colors in Provence and wrote »... if I were a painter, I think I could not paint this country because it is too BEAUTIFUL. And the eye cannot take in these colors and these forms at once. If painting a landscape, then northern Germany, the marshes, the fields...«. In the same year, she became pregnant in the fall, and her father unexpectedly died on her birthday. In March her marriage to the later Dr. phil. Horst Ochse followed. In summer, she gave birth to her first child and had to quit studying. In the following seven years, Hildegard had three other children who required her full attention. In the spring of 1973, the family moved to West Berlin for professional reasons. After an extended stay in France with the family in 1975, their marriage began to fail later leading to a final separation. Almost simultaneously in early 1975, Hildegard again discovered her passion for photography. At first she taught herself. Subsequently, she learned through the Werkstatt für Photographie, in photography courses of the continuing education center in Zehlendorf in 1976, and later in the legendary photography workshop of Michael Schmidt in Berlin-Kreuzberg.
At the beginning of the workshop, a somewhat orthodox documentary way of seeing dominated, which organized itself around the aesthetics of Michael Schmidt and focused on a presentation of everyday life. Later, the photography scene experimented with new forms of documentation which emphasized a subjective view of the author. Hildegard Ochse quickly developed an independent, artistic authorship with a personal viewpoint. Most students and attendees were self-taught and therefore had a more liberal understanding of the medium compared to professional photographers. The imagery and the content were initially more important than technical quality. She participated in courses under the direction of Ulrich Goerlich, Wilmar Koenig, as well as workshops by American photographers such as Lewis Baltz, John Gossage, Ralph Gibson and Larry Fink and the German photographer André Gelpke. Her imagery developed soon after initial attempts—profound, multi-layered and philosophical, dense, highly concentrated, conceptual and documentary. She created images primarily for herself and per her own wishes.
From 1978 Hildegard taught photography at the state media center, as well as at the Pedagogical University Berlin and could present her images in galleries for the first time. Shortly after her new beginning, the first photo series were purchased by the Berlin Gallery. After the final separation from her husband and a private fresh start, she established herself as an independent author photographer as of 1981. She received extensive commissions, grants and exhibitions at home and abroad.
A portion of the body of work she produced is housed in the collections of the Berlinische Galerie in Berlin, Art Collection of the German Bundestag, and at the Universitá di Parma, Centro studi, dip. Fotografia and private collections.
She traveled extensively with her camera and thus unintentionally documented her own life. Italy became her preferred destination. In 1995 she was diagnosed with leukemia, she died in the summer of 1997 at the age of 61 in Berlin. She and her husband had four children: Adrian, Katharina, Caroline, Benjamin.
Publishing rights for most of Hildegard Ochse's photographs are now handled by her son Benjamin Ochse and the Prussian Heritage Image Archive.

Notable works