Born in 1955 in Dülken, North Rhine-Westphalia, is a German photographic artist and former professor of photography at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. His work is recognized for its early and sustained engagement with color photography in an artistic context in Germany.

After studying visual communication at the Folkwang School in Essen from 1977 to 1983, Joachim Brohm was strongly influenced by Michael Schmidt, with whom he became involved in the activities of the Werkstatt für Fotografie in Berlin during the late 1970s. This context shaped his documentary-oriented yet conceptually rigorous approach to photography.

Brohm’s central long-term project, Areal (1992–2002), documents the transformation of a former industrial site in northern Munich into a planned “park city.” Over a decade, he repeatedly photographed the area, producing an extensive body of color images that record abandoned buildings, interim uses, and found objects. The work examines processes of urban change and temporal transition through serial and comparative photographic strategies.

In 1993, Brohm was appointed professor of artistic photography at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, where he also served as rector from 2003 to 2011. He retired from teaching in 2021. Brohm is regarded as one of the first German photographers to consistently explore color photography as an artistic medium at a time when black-and-white imagery still dominated photographic discourse in Germany.

Reference
Biography text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), German edition. Retrieved January 19, 2026.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_Brohm