I am a creative with a strong passion for photography. As a result of my extensive work in the publishing industries, I have experience in a wide range of topics.My strengths include copywriting, editing, blogging and journalism, including writing for the New York Times. On the artistic side, I am an expert in book and graphic design, layout, illustration, and, as mentioned above, professional photography. On the academic side, I studied anthropology and art history at the Free University of Berlin and the Ludwig-Maximilian University of Munich, accompanied by an internship at the House of World Cultures (HKW) in Berlin, where I also worked as a freelancer.
Below you will find some examples of my work in a more or less chronological order.

Poster Design: The First Sentence

My twelve posters on internationally acclaimed works of literature and their authors were displayed in the stairwell of the Berlin Literaturhaus 2023-2024. These posters are the result of an experiment: While re-reading the texts, I tried to transform them into collages, using historical prints, details from book covers and my own photographs.
Within a year, I had a dozen drafts that I kept pulling out, revising, looking at together, putting back, adding to, and simplifying. At some point it didn’t work anymore, no revision seemed to make sense, mostly it just restored a previous state. A writer may recognize parallels to his own work here.
I incorporated the first sentence of the text into the design in order to connect the individual graphics. You can see all twelve posters on a separate website following this link.

Exhibition and Book Design: Ulf Miehe – Aspects of an Author

In 2019, I initiated and hosted two successful events on the work of writer and filmmaker Ulf Miehe at Literaturhaus Berlin. This included an exhibition of 18 photographs based on the novel “Ich hab noch einen Toten in Berlin” (I left a Dead One in Berlin).
In 2020, the exhibition moved on to the Wegemuseum in Wusterhausen/Dosse, Ulf Miehe’s birthplace. Together with the museum, I expanded the exhibition to include a “biography in fragments”, generously supported by Angelika Miehe. The result was a text-graphic-photo book with 82 pages. I was also responsible for the conversion of the material into exhibition cubes for the museum.
Under the title “Drehorte – Fotografien nach einem Kriminalroman” (Locations – Photographs after a Crime Novel) I have published a catalog for the photo exhibition. Available online and in bookstores:
Drehorte – Fotografien nach einem Kriminalroman ISBN/EAN 9783751948654
ULF MIEHE – Facetten eines Autors ISBN/EAN 9783751936316

Web Design: A Wunderkammer in Ryan, Oklahoma

The Parlor is Ryan’s two storey cabinet of wonder (German: Wunderkammer), where everyone is welcome to visit, share their stories and contribute meaningful objects. Laura Thorn and her friends are the local keepers of the archives. Not officially and not trained as historians, they follow their instincts. Laura paints and restores, her other talents are collecting, arranging and storytelling. She lets the objects come to her and gives their stories of origin and use full attention. It is mostly things of everyday life of the land along the Red River you will see in The Parlor. It offers them asylum where once was Ryan’s funeral home.
I developed a website with floor plan navigation for Laura Thorn’s private museum.

Writing about Photography for the New York Times

I have written several articles for the New York Times magazine LENS and published them since 2009. Two examples you can find online, follow this link to the article about Russian photo artist Oleg Videnin with twenty reader comments. The article about Adam Panczuk’s photography from Poland you can find here: lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/showcase-defying-the-odds-acting-oddly

History of War in Europe: No one gets through

One of many publications in magazines and newspapers that commissioned me as a photo journalist. This one is about the Battle of Verdun in the First World War, on the centenary “anniversary” in 2014. Author of the text is theologian Christoph Dieckmann. He was editor of the weekly newspaper Die Zeit, and concludes his text in Zeit Geschichte (“Time History”) magazine with the words: “Remembering Verdun means hating the war. Out of gratitude for not knowing it.”
Full text in German: https://www.zeit.de/zeit-geschichte/2014/01/erster-weltkrieg-schlacht-von-verdun-stellungskrieg

LAB EAST – Photography from Central and Eastern Europe

TRAPPED? How to use this book.
by Walter Keller
“In late spring of 2010 Horst Kløver and myself put together the exhibition LABOR OST in Zurich/Switzerland within the framework of the national photo exhibition ewz selection. The public carefully looked at the show, spent quite some time discovering unknown creative talents that geographically speaking – Zurich is in Western Europe – stem from the “East”. Talking during and after the show with some of the visitors, I discovered what in culture anthropology would be called a “positive stereotype”. There was quite a bit of astonishment among the visitors that so much was going on among young photographers from the so called “East”. But I started having doubts about the whole labelling of our show by using the word “East”.
Do you get better credits or comments because you come from an “exotic” country that people from the West hardly ever travel to, while we seem to be familiar with capitals of Western nations or the USA as if they were our own cities?  
[…] 
This book is necessary not because the work presented on its pages is “Eastern”, but because of the ghosts of the past still so present. Had Europe not been divided, would you care about “East” or “West” while browsing through this publication? Certainly not. Such contradictions are the blood of our times. In this sense, this book is about “The East”. But only in this sense.”

The cover of LAB EAST is by one of the best portrait photographers in Europe: Mirjana Vrbaski. She received the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize for this image the same year LAB EAST was published.
Link to complete book online with full essay, other texts and all portfolios: https://www.blurb.de/books/1681489-lab-east

From the press folder:
“LABOR OST is conceived as a stimulus for discussion of aesthetic and social issues and functions like a wall newspaper: as a travel and research report. The chosen form of a freely hung picture show consisting of digital printouts, with a lively alternation of text and picture elements, corresponds to the dynamics of the event.”

From the schedule of Swiss Photo Award 2010 in Zurich:
“Looking towards Eastern Europe – Report about a research endeavor
A picture soirée with Horst Kløver, photographer, curator and author, Berlin
HK, organizer of the LABOR OST (Lab East) presentation, reports on his impressions and assessments of undiscovered photographic positions from countries in Eastern, Central and Southeastern Europe. HK comes to Zurich with fresh impressions directly from the photography festival in Lodz/Poland. After the picture soirée there will be the opportunity for questions and a discussion with him and curator Walter Keller.”

Book Design for Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König (publishing house)

PIERRE HUYGHE: ON SITE by Marie-France Rafael, Cologne 2013
Size 11 x 18 cm, 64 pages with 13 illustrations, paperback
In an extended interview Huyghe gives a detailed account of his longtime preoccupation with the format of the exhibition–a journey that eventually led him to the study of living organisms.

ARI BENJAMIN MEYERS: MUSIC ON DISPLAY by Marie-France Rafael, Cologne 2016
Size 11 x 18 cm, 80 pages with 15 illustrations, paperback

ASSIGN & ARRANGE Poster and flyer for art historical conference

I designed the poster in DIN A1 format for an international conference on the methodologies of presentation of art, video art and dance. The conference took place at the ICI Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry (link to the conference page, with flyer). Information about the project is available on the archived website of the Collaborative Research Center 626 at the FU Berlin (with full program).
A commission from: Free University FU Berlin, SFB 626 ‘Aesthetic Experience in the Sign of the Dissolution of Artistic Boundaries’, Center for Movement Research ZFB, German Research Foundation DFG

Short Films about Photography

Adam Magyar created a recording device that uses the sensor of a scanner to capture the world as it passes in front of him. The resulting panoramic photographs record the movements of pedestrians in such a way that they all appear to be walking in the same direction, while anything static appears as streaks along the image. In this way, our notions of time and space are turned upside down, or rather, in the case of these compelling images, sideways. Or as Adam Magyar puts it: “I am making finish photos of an urban race, but without a finish line, winners and losers”.
I produced a 5-minute documentary about Ahmet Ertug, who photographed the Berlin Reichstag with his team in 2011 for his book project DOMES. The film was published by POLKA gallery in Paris on Vimeo. My essay “The Art of Ahmet Ertug – a Vision of European Culture” was printed in Professional Photography magazine 2010.

Garden and Landscape Photography

I am a member of laif agency for reportage in Cologne, Germany, since the year 2000. My photographs and photo illustrations of the last two decades travelling Europe can be obtained at archive.laif.de/klover-horst
Please contact Robert Caçi at laif or laif partner agency Redux in the United States for further information.

Technology and Consequences

I have been documenting technology and its consequences for high-quality magazines such as Brand Eins, Der Spiegel, GQ, Time magazine and many more since 1999.

Secrets of the Sun: Showing environmental art

The House of World Cultures (Haus der Kulturen der Welt, HKW) commissioned me early in my career to document Peter Erskine’s elaborate environmental art installation. The project is described in detail here: https://erskinesolarart.net/secrets-of-the-sun-berlin

Documenting Believers from all over the World in Berlin

While studying anthropology and art history at the FU Berlin, I visited, interviewed and photographed several groups of believers from all over the world in their places of worship in Berlin. It was a commission from the Berlin Senate for a book publication and a travelling exhibition. A little later my pictures and words were printed in the daily newspaper TAZ.

Electronic Catalogue for Exhibition of Australian Aboriginal Art

As a staff member of the House of World Cultures (HKW), I created the concept, design and layout of an electronic (CD-ROM) documentation of a major exhibition of contemporary Australian Aboriginal painting and sculpture.