The exhibition at Kunstforum der TU Darmstadt and in Darmstadt's public space is the first of its kind to honor the work of journalist and photographer Milli Bau (*1906 Darmstadt-✝2005 ibid.). From Milli Bau's extensive estate, with more than 6,000 slides and photographs, a concise and intimate exhibition of her travels and the woman behind the camera has been created. Julia Reichelt, director of the TU Kunstforum, and Alice Pawlik, curator at the Weltkulturen Museum Frankfurt, have curated the exhibition in collaboration.

"Then I become a migratory bird, a nowhere home, a person who is fleeting on earth." (Milli Bau)

In 1949, Milli Bau was the only woman to take part in a three-year expedition to South America and later traveled the world alone in a converted VW bus. Her impressive photographs, of which around 800 can be seen in the exhibition, bear witness to the more than 40 journeys Bau undertook from 1948 onwards, later as a feature writer for the Hamburg newspaper 'Welt'. They are a sign of cosmopolitanism and cultural understanding - and an impressive testimony to an emancipated, intrepid and curious woman in Germany in the 1950s and beyond. She traveled to North Africa, Pakistan, India, China, Egypt, Sri Lanka, Turkey and Iran. From 1967, she lived in Tehran for seven years. She crossed Siberia at the age of 88. She captured all these journeys in photographs with her Rolleiflex: insights into a world that was unknown in the West and that no longer exists today.

The exhibition at the Kunstforum der TU Darmstadt will be accompanied by the exhibition “Around the world with a typewriter - from the estate of Milli Bau” at the Darmstadt City Archive from June 4 to August 30, 2024.