This exhibition at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin, on view through March 2014, shows five decades as seen by a German photographer born the year World War II broke out.
Barbara Klemm (b.1939) started working as a photographer in 1959 for the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), which employed her from 1970 to 2004 to cover arts and politics. Many of her photographs appeared in the newspaper’s culture section and on the cover of their Saturday supplement.
Barbara Klemm was there: when students protested in the 1960s, when Willy Brandt met Leonid Brezhnev in Bonn in May 1973 (a sign of détente in the middle of the Cold War), when Brezhnev and Honecker shared a Brotherhood kiss to mark the thirtieth anniversary of the GDR in 1979. These photographs were seen around the world.
She was there when Gorbachev spoke in East Berlin a few weeks before the wall fell. She was there when it fell. And she was there when the last Russian soldiers left East Germany in 1994. These photographs are a chronicle of German history, but also much more.
She traveled extensively in Europe and on almost every other continent. Whether covering political events or scenes from daily life. Her photographs follow the evolution of contemporary society through its periods of peace and violence. There’s nothing sensational about Klemm’s journalism. She exhibits a subdued and accurate understanding of our time and culture.
As head of the culture desk at the FAZ, Klemm took portraits of many artists, including Joseph Beuys at work in 1982, Simone de Beauvoir at her desk in 1980, Mick Jagger performing in 1970, and Alfred Hitchcock on set in 1972.
The exhibition consists of 320 black-and-white photographs accompanied by the original articles published from the 1970s to the present day.
Viewers will relive these events, whether they were present or not, through the eyes of Klemm and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (known for its free-market and conservative views). In June 1995, the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude wrapped the Reichstag in silver fabric. The act was, like all real spectacles, timeless, and the FAZ and Barbara Klemm bore witness along with media outlets across the world. There are days when we miss out on being in the right place in the right time. Those are the days when we’re thankful the press exists.
Exhibition :
« Barbara Klemm. Photographs 1968 – 2013 »
16 November 2013 – 9 March 2014
Martin Gropius Bau
Niederkirchnerstraße 7
10963 Berlin
Germany
http://www.gropiusbau.de
Catalogue :
Publisher: NIMBUS. Kunst und Bïcher
Museums edition: € 29
Trade edition (German/English): € 48
ISBN 978-3-907142-93-6
