Paul Krenkler lives and works in Hamburg, St. Pauli and New York. Her work focuses on the social consequences of urban change.
Around the turn of the millennium, CP Krenkler documented punk rock culture using analog black-and-white negative film, before her focus temporarily shifted to staging and portrait photography as an assistant to fashion photographer Monica Menez (2001/2002).
After her book and exhibition project titled „10 Years Later“ about people in the punk scene then and now (2012) and the publication of her images in various magazines and newspapers such as DIE ZEIT, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Archiv der Jugendkulturen, Stern, Freitag, Fluter, Playboy, among others, she began in 2012 to dedicate her work to the changes in St. Pauli – the district where she has been living since 2010.
She studied at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and did her master’s thesis „Buy, Buy – St. Pauli“ with Prof. Dr. Matthias Lehnhardt. „Buy, Buy – St. Pauli“ is a work of art in words and photographs about the sale of her hood.
After her master degree, she moved to New York for about a year, where she initially focused on architectural photography, but quickly found similarities to her work in St. Pauli. Her photo art project on Chinatown, People in Front of their Working Spaces, mirrors her portrait series about St. Pauli. People are at the center of both photo projects, but embedded in their environment.
Her stay in New York was a turning point in her career. The interest in her as an artist allowed her to focus on her artistic work full time since then. Her return to St. Pauli thus remained short-lived. Since 2016, she commutes between Hamburg and New York.
Literary texts were now added to her photographic work. In her blog, which she publishes on Facebook under the working title Weird Stories from New York City, she recorded, for example, the effects of the Covid pandemic on the metropolis. Her writinings helped her to process the mass mortality, including the collapse of the funeral system, and the way the city not only awakened, but downright blossomed during the Black Lives Matter movement after harrowing months of fighting the virus.
Her work at the “Elbschlosskeller” (2017-2018) and the Davidwache (2017-2021) in
St. Pauli includes photographs and writings, and has been presented in readings such as at the Lange Naacht der ZEIT. She has had five exhibitions in New York and several in Germany. Her pictures from the Elbschlosskeller were shown in the St. Pauli church and in the workrooms of the prostitutes in the famous Herbertstrasse. In 2019-2020, Hamburg’s Museum of Labor presented her documentary about the police officers of the Davidwache as part of the exhibition titled „Night. Everything but sleep“ with an accompanying reading by the artist. In 2021-2022, the Museum of Labor showed CP Krenkler’s work again in the exhibition Conflicts. Her photographs of the Esso buildings in St. Pauli and the struggle for their preservation are now on display there.
In 2021, the Museum of the City of New York purchased fourteen photographs from her portrait series on Chinatown, Manhattan, for its permanent collection.
2025 her first book got published at ARTTRADO.
Paul Krenkler lives and works in Hamburg, St. Pauli and New York. Her work focuses on the social consequences of urban change.
Around the turn of the millennium, CP Krenkler documented punk rock culture using analog black-and-white negative film, before her focus temporarily shifted to staging and portrait photography as an assistant to fashion photographer Monica Menez (2001/2002).
After her book and exhibition project titled „10 Years Later“ about people in the punk scene then and now (2012) and the publication of her images in various magazines and newspapers such as DIE ZEIT, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Archiv der Jugendkulturen, Stern, Freitag, Fluter, Playboy, among others, she began in 2012 to dedicate her work to the changes in St. Pauli – the district where she has been living since 2010.
She studied at the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg and did her master’s thesis „Buy, Buy – St. Pauli“ with Prof. Dr. Matthias Lehnhardt. „Buy, Buy – St. Pauli“ is a work of art in words and photographs about the sale of her hood.
After her master degree, she moved to New York for about a year, where she initially focused on architectural photography, but quickly found similarities to her work in St. Pauli. Her photo art project on Chinatown, People in Front of their Working Spaces, mirrors her portrait series about St. Pauli. People are at the center of both photo projects, but embedded in their environment.
Her stay in New York was a turning point in her career. The interest in her as an artist allowed her to focus on her artistic work full time since then. Her return to St. Pauli thus remained short-lived. Since 2016, she commutes between Hamburg and New York.
Literary texts were now added to her photographic work. In her blog, which she publishes on Facebook under the working title Weird Stories from New York City, she recorded, for example, the effects of the Covid pandemic on the metropolis. Her writinings helped her to process the mass mortality, including the collapse of the funeral system, and the way the city not only awakened, but downright blossomed during the Black Lives Matter movement after harrowing months of fighting the virus.
Her work at the “Elbschlosskeller” (2017-2018) and the Davidwache (2017-2021) in
St. Pauli includes photographs and writings, and has been presented in readings such as at the Lange Naacht der ZEIT. She has had five exhibitions in New York and several in Germany. Her pictures from the Elbschlosskeller were shown in the St. Pauli church and in the workrooms of the prostitutes in the famous Herbertstrasse. In 2019-2020, Hamburg’s Museum of Labor presented her documentary about the police officers of the Davidwache as part of the exhibition titled „Night. Everything but sleep“ with an accompanying reading by the artist. In 2021-2022, the Museum of Labor showed CP Krenkler’s work again in the exhibition Conflicts. Her photographs of the Esso buildings in St. Pauli and the struggle for their preservation are now on display there.
In 2021, the Museum of the City of New York purchased fourteen photographs from her portrait series on Chinatown, Manhattan, for its permanent collection.
2025 her first book got published at ARTTRADO.
