Out of Focus

"Sa w wè a se pa sa"
"There’s more to it than meets the eye" (Haitian saying)

Can an exhibition by a German photographer convey an image of Haiti that is not characterized by stereotypes? With "Out of Focus", the artist’s collective U5 presents the images of Leonore Mau (1916–2013) in a multimedia, sensory environment that addresses questions of showing and not showing. 

Leonore Mau traveled to Haiti in the 1970s during the dictatorship of Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. She traveled together with the writer Hubert Fichte (1935–1986). The trip was part of a long-term research project on Afro-diasporic religions. Mau’s photographs were published in the photo books "Xango" (1976) and "Petersilie" (1980) and in travel reports in many German magazines. However, the majority of her photographs have not yet been published or shown in exhibitions and are in the photographer‘s estate in the bpk-Fotoarchiv, Berlin.

In Mau’s photo books, there are photographs that confirm the prejudiced image of Haiti and Vodou, but in her extensive legacy there are many more images in which everyday life, community, dictatorship, spirituality and tourism coexist. Leonore Mau’s oeuvre opens a space for critical reflection on political, economic, cultural, and personal entanglements. This touches upon questions of aesthetics, as well as on the ethics of photography. How can the images be shown without reproducing power relations? 

"What you see is not what it is": the environment developed by U5 in collaboration with ALIAS architects transforms Mau’s photographs in various fluid states and thus opens up a dialog on the topic of representation. Madafi Pierre, an artist and filmmaker, designed a sound collage to accompany it.

Our exhibition is an artistic development of the research project "Out of Focus" by Dora Imhof and U5 at the University of Zurich. Together with the cultural anthropologist and artist Gina Athena Ulysse, the houngan (priest), musician and general director of the Bureau National d’Ethnologie in Port-au-Prince Erol Josué and other people and their different expertise, the exhibition develops an approach to Leonore Mau‘s images that allows for ambivalence, in which criticism and beauty are not contradictory.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a comprehensive four-language publication edited by Dora Imhof, Gina Athena Ulysse, and U5, published by Hatje Cantz.


Public program 
The public program is a central part of the "Out of Focus" exhibition. It gives space to the different perspectives on the photographs and to a dialog about ways to deal with them. In the experimental discussion format "Relational Viewing", developed especially for the exhibition, the focus is on viewing and showing photographs.

November 4, 2025 
5.30 pm Relational Viewing with Dora Imhof, Madafi Pierre, and U5
7.30 pm Performance by Erol Josué

January 16, 2026 
5.30 pm Relational Viewing with Nathalie David, Jean-Ulrick Désert, Dora Imhof, and U5 
7.30 pm Reading Kettly Mars 
8.30 pm Film screening Nathalie David, "This Photographer Called Leonore Mau" (2005)

February 13, 2026 
5.30 pm Relational Viewing with Dora Imhof, U5, and guests 
7.30 pm Lecture Kyrah Malika Daniels 
8.30 pm Performance by Gina Athena Ulysse 

Cooperation partners: S. Fischer Foundation, bpk-Bildagentur, Berlin
With generous support of Förderverein Lenbachhaus e.V., Pro Helvetia, Art Mentor Foundation Lucerne 

Exhibition information

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