Wim Wenders: Instant Stories

Nearly 250 polaroids by film director Wim Wenders, taken over five decades between 1968 and 2017

Wim Wenders, the distinguished filmmaker and co-founder of New German Cinema, is also a world-renowned photographer. He has exhibited his large-format, panoramic photographs in Paris, Hamburg, Berlin, Bilbao, Sydney, Shanghai, Rome, São Paulo, Moscow, Copenhagen, New York and Düsseldorf. Now, for the first time, this book – published to accompany an exhibition at London’s Photographer’s Gallery – presents his polaroids. Spanning the 1970s to the present day, they feature friends, actors and personal heroes, objects, places, spaces and situations from the everyday life of a travelling filmmaker. Wenders does not order his ‘photographic notes’, as he calls them, by theme, but as stories. They are accompanied by his own texts, short stories and haikus.

Wim Wenders: Instant Stories is a photographic road trip through the life of the artist, from his early travels through America’s cinematic landscapes to the German provinces and beyond.

About the Author

Wim Wenders is an award-winning filmmaker, writer and photographer. He was appointed president of the European Film Academy in 1996, and was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear of the Berlin International Film Festival.