In a career spanning more than four decades, Berlin-born Sibylle Bergemann created an extraordinary oeuvre ranging from fashion and portrait photographs to literary reportages and atmospheric series—her focus remaining 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 catalogue accompanying the exhibition at Berlinische Galerie approaches the unique visual universe of one of Germany’s most famous photographers on several narrative levels. It includes more than 200 photographs from the museum’s own collection as well as from the photographer’s estate, and shows selected images from her early work for the first time.

SIBYLLE BERGEMANN (1941–2010) started her career in photography in 1966. From 1967 onwards, she worked as a freelancer for various magazines, including the 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.