Sibylle Bergemann

In a career spanning more than four decades, Berlin-born Sibylle Bergemann created an extraordinary oeuvre ranging from fashion and portrait photographs, literary reportages and artistic documentary series. Alternating between commissions and work of her own choosing, her focus was always on people. In the GDR, Bergemann worked both freelance as well as continuously for various art and culture magazines. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, she co-founded the self-administered photographer’s agency OSTKREUZ, and worked for leading German as well as international magazines such as GEO, Die Zeit, Stern or New York Times Magazine. The catalog accompanying the exhibition at Berlinische Galerie approaches the unique visual universe of one Germany’s most famous photographers on several narrative levels. Including more than 200 photographs from the museum’s own collection as well as from the photographer’s estate, it shows selected images from her early work for the first time. SIBYLLE BERGEMANN (1941–2010) commenced her photographic training with Arno Fischer in 1966. From 1967 onwards, she worked as a freelance photographer for various magazines, such as legendary fashion magazine Sibylle. In the 1990s she traveled extensively around the globe to take photos, now in color rather than black-and-white, for internationally renowned magazines.