Tania June Sammons

Wundercamera: Savannah was a site-specific photographic exhibition featuring Telfair Museums’ three sites—Telfair Academy, Owens-Thomas House, and Jepson Center. The exhibition was the third iteration of an installation curated by German artist Klaus Wehner/Museum Clausum, and was partially funded by the National Endowment for the Arts. The two previous Wundercamera exhibitions took place at Pitzhanger Manor House and Gallery in London (2013), and the Manchester Metropolitan University’s Holden Gallery in Manchester, England (2014). Each exhibition featured a selection of Wehner’s work alongside a dozen other established and emerging photographers. Wehner's Wundercamera series created a conceptional dialogue about museums, collecting, and curating by using museums as both subject and canvas. 

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I invited Wehner to guest curate Wundercamera: Savannah to include Telfair Museums in his critical conversation, and to add an additional layer to his work. His photographs of the Sir John Soane Museum in London, a series he titled Now and Then, provided a clever juxtaposition to the Telfair sites because Soane, one of England's top architects in the early 19th century, influenced the work of William Jay, the architect of Telfair Museums' Owens-Thomas House, and Telfair mansion. Wehner/Museum Clausum spent a week photographing the Telfair in 2015, and included twelve prints from that residency in the exhibition. Telfair Museums acquired three of them for their permanent collection. Photo credit: Klaus Wehner/Museum Clausum