Have you heard a concert, seen a play, or watched an opera, any time in the last 30 years? (Or read VAN?) If so, you’ve probably come across a photograph by Monika Rittershaus. She’s one of Europe’s best and most in-demand theater photographers, working with leading houses, conductors and directors. Rittershaus is the first choice—and often the only choice—for artists like Daniel Barenboin, Simon Rattle, Christof Loy, Barrie Kosky, Romeo Castellucci, Claus Guth and Mariame Clément. She’s also the main photographer for the Berlin Philharmonic, accompanying the orchestra both at home and on tour.
It’s easy to spot a Rittershaus photograph, especially if you’ve seen the performance she shot. Her images are never of the most obvious, forward, blunt, or usual scenes. Instead, she finds and captures fleeting moments in which the essence of a production emerges. “Monika understands the time and space of the theater like no other theater photographer I know,” Kosky writes in his introduction to The Scene and the Unseen, a book collecting 15 years of Rittershaus’s opera photography. “Her photos are no mere reproductions of someone else’s artwork; they are artworks themselves,” he adds.
I met Rittershaus in December in a Berlin café. She had just come from Amsterdam (“Turandot”) and Zurich (“Eliogabalo”), and was preparing to work in Berlin’s Philharmonie before heading on to Geneva (“Maria Stuart”).
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