Pictures from the edge of the world

BERLIN-BASED photographer Sibylle Bergmann (1941-2010) said she was always peering through her camera lens for “something that’s not consistent”. She wanted to take pictures of “the edge of the world” and “the non-exchangeable”.
Every photo – as seen in an exhibition the Goethe Institut has mounted in Khon Kaen – tells a story in the most remarkably subtle way. In the way she interprets and judges relationships, Bergmann plays with the viewer’s desires.
The impressive fashion shots and news pictures, the urban landscapes and portraits reflect her diverse talents as a photographer and her artist’s sensibilities. “I’m interested in the edges of the world, not the centre,” she always said.
Opened yesterday, the exhibition at the Khon Kaen University gallery highlights classic Bergmann images of Germany, realistic depictions of a multifaceted culture. The former communist East Germany, where she grew up, looks fittingly stark in black and white.
Bergmann began her career as a fashion photographer and extended her range by undergoing training with Arno Fischer in 1966. In 1990 she co-founded the Ostkreuz photo agency, which remains one of the most successful in Germany.
Bergmann took portraits of everyday life in East Germany for 45 years, capturing an evolution frozen by Cold War animosities and then abruptly thawed with the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly there was change everywhere.
She later surveyed New York, Tokyo, Paris and Sao Paulo by camera, and even switched to colour images for her travels across Africa and Asia on assignment for Geo magazine.
Bergmann’s fashion photography is stunning in itself, subversive in the East German context, with brilliant flares of colour against endless, drab, grey backdrops. What she was looking for with the clothing models – and then with every other subject – was “something in faces or landscapes that doesn’t quite fit”.
In 1994 Bergemann became an active member of the Academy of Arts in Berlin, one of Europe’s oldest cultural institutions, and had a major exhibition at the Museum fur Photographie in Braunschweig in 2007. She died three years later of cancer, age 69.
 SHOW & TALK
IN KHON KAEN
 - The Sibylle Bergemann retrospective is at the Khon Kaen University gallery all this month.
- Curator Dr Ursula Zeller will speak about “Documentary Tendencies in Contemporary German Photography” at 9.30am on Saturday in the university’s Buddhasilp Building. Admission is free.