From 30 October 2026, Fotografiska Shanghai presents Rehearsing Assembly, a major solo exhibition by German photographer Candida Höfer. A prominent figure in the Düsseldorf School of Photography, Höfer is internationally known for her large-scale photographs of public interiors, including theatres, libraries, museums and archives. Curated by Shen Chen, the exhibition brings together 28 colour photographs spanning key periods of Höfer’s practice from the 1990s to the present, offering an overview of her sustained engagement with space, visual order and public life.
From reading in libraries to preservation in archives and collective viewing in theatres, Höfer has consistently approached public architecture as a way of observing collective behaviour and spatial order. Over five decades, her practice has contributed to a broader understanding of how contemporary photography can examine space, institutions and the mechanisms of looking.
One of Höfer’s most comprehensive solo exhibitions in China in recent years, Rehearsing Assembly brings together her sustained and rigorous examination of public architecture while inviting audiences to reconsider the structures that shape everyday and shared life. As people temporarily disappear from view, architecture, order and accumulated history come to the foreground. Her precise and restrained photographs reveal the systems that quietly organise how we inhabit, move through and look at the world around us.
People out, space in. Höfer’s photographs present a world that is familiar yet subtly estranged. From 30 October 2026, visitors to Fotografiska Shanghai are invited to look again at the public spaces that have become part of everyday life.