For nearly seven decades now, Walter Schels’ work has straddled the lines between documentation and transformation, between formal rigor and an experimental spirit. Schels is best-known as an empathetic portraitist, one who explores the essence of his subjects in a minimalistic visual language. Whether young or old, elephant or wilted flower—at the heart of his portraits and long-term studies lie existential themes such as identity, birth and death. Schels’ experimental work, however, has been comparatively overlooked: through overpainting, double-exposure, collage and polarization, he has increasingly moved into the realm of painting. Indeed Schels views photography as a changeable, open-ended process: “An image is never finished,” he says, referencing both his creative stance and the infinite possibilities of the darkroom.

16° Pisces. Photographs 1958–2026 brings together both halves of Schels’ œuvre for the first time. Here we discover his acclaimed portraits alongside cutting-edge images including reshaped cityscapes of 1960s New York and recent abstractions using photographic chemicals and plant fragments. The book’s title, not unlike its content, is poetic self-reflection: on the day of Schels’ birth in 1960, the sun was in Pisces at precisely 16 degrees. From this constellation he has defined his artistic temperament: one of sensitivity, intuition, imagination, and an inexhaustible curiosity for his subjects.

Exhibition: C/O Berlin, 19 June to 2 September 2026