MARKUS LEHR (*1959) is a visual artist and photographer.
He graduated in Communication from the University of Arts in Berlin and has been actively involved in photography and digital media ever since. Several notable international publications have featured his pictures. His work has been published in three books in 2013, 2018 and 2025 and showcased at solo and group exhibitions in Germany, China, France, Italy, Holland and the UK. He lives and works in Berlin.
His work centers on urban and postindustrial landscapes, tracing the social, economic, and psychological transformations embedded within them. With the integration of AI, Markus Lehr extends his photographic practice beyond the captured moment, transforming his own photographs into images that exist between memory, observation, and imagination. These hybrid works blur the boundaries between documentation and invention, transforming familiar places into images that feel at once believable and impossible. Rather than using AI as a means of image generation, Markus Lehr invites it into the studio as a willing accomplice, exploring how technological systems reshape perception, memory, and the construction of visual reality.
Artist statement
“Despite the fact that there are rarely any people visible in my images, I think they are all about us.
There was a time in my life when I worked in a theatre. And that moment when everybody had left, and the stage was quiet and empty, was always the most inspiring one for me. The show was over, and the light was still directed on the stage, but nobody was watching it anymore.
What I am looking for in my work is just like that.”
Selected news & exhibitions
48 Stunden Neukölln
Group Exhibition, Berlin Neukölln. Opening: Friday, July 03, 9pm.
Opening times: 04/05 Juli 2026, 12am – 8pm.
This exhibition presents works from my series “Dreams of Kodak“.
More information.
All kinds of wishes
Group Exhibition, Wendland. Opening: Thursday, May 14, 11am / Guided tour: May 21, 04pm.
Opening times: May 14 – May 25, 11am – 06pm.
This exhibition presents works from “Unmade Beds and Butterflies“.
More information.
Another world is possible
Group Exhibition, Berlin Steglitz, Friday, Dec 5, 2025, 7 pm.
The exhibition brings together four artists from Berlin, Chicago, and Tokyo who engage with the fundamental elements of visual design: color, texture, composition, and light. More information.
Unmade Beds and Butterflies
Book Launch on November 28, 2025 at the Museum of Unheard-of Things, Berlin.
The Seen, The Unseen & The Uncanny
Group Exhibition, Berlin Gendarmenmarkt, March 2025 – February 2026: More information.
Group exhibition with Hiroshi Sugimoto and 5 other international Artists: Theaters of absence, Blacklight gallery, Padua, Italy, May 31, 2024
North East South West – BEYOND THE WALL, Venice, Italy, October 07 – 22, 2023
Solo exhibition “Songs of ghosts”, Museum der Unerhörten Dinge, Berlin, September 02 – 21, 2023
ROME INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR, Medina Art Gallery, December 13 – 30, 2022
CONTEMPORARY VENICE 2022, Palazzo Bembo Oct 20 – November 10, 2022
VENICE INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR, Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello, Sept. 08 – 30, 2022
DE B-SIDE: “A visual quest for the backside of human presence”,
Visserhallen, Ijmuiden, The Netherlands, May 22 – July 17, 2022
Group exhibition with Edward Burtynsky and 20 other international Artists: “Another look at Man-Altered Landscape”,
Gallery Catherine et André Hug / PhotoSaintGermain, Paris, November 2021: More information
“Fokus Berlin”, Kühlhaus, Berlin, October 2020
Exhibition with Grant Simon Rogers: Mise en scène, Atelier André Kirchner, Berlin, March – April 2020
Exhibition with Toru Ukai: Tokyo Meets Berlin – A Tale of Two Cities, LA CAMERA CHIARA, Berlin, August 2019
Solo exhibition “Occasionally surprising”, Museum der Unerhörten Dinge, Berlin, March 2019
“Preparing for Darkness“, curated by Marianne Kapfer, Kühlhaus Berlin, May 2018
Solo exhibition: “China – Everything happens at the same time”, LA CAMERA CHIARA, Berlin, April 2018
Solo exhibition, McKinsey & Company, Inc., Munich, January 2016
Berlin photography, Gallery Carpentier, Berlin, January 2015
BEWAREXHIBIT, Paris, Group exhibition, October 2013
Publikumspreis of the German Architects federation, November 2012
Selected publications
2026: European Photography, Issue 119
2025: Unmade Beds and Butterflies
2021: Natures: Landscapes of Human Intent by Immaterial Books
2020: The B-sides of architecture: 96 pictures by 32 photographers from 12 different countries.
2018: China – Everything happens at the same time
2018: Artist feature in the Chinese Lifestyle Magazine VISION, Beijing
2017: Camera Infinita releases “Insomnia – Night Takes Berlin”
2013: Fairytales and Nightingales