Sibylle Bergemann

Sibylle Bergemann started studying photography in the late 1960s in East Berlin under the prominent photographer Arno Fischer, her future husband. From 1970 to 1995 her photographs regularly appeared in the leading East German periodicals of the time, Sonntag, Das Magazin, and Sibylle. Bergemann was known to work in quite different genres including documentary photography, landscape and city views, and portraits.

She began her rise to fame as a fashion photographer for Sibylle in the 1970s. Developing her own style, she was the first in East Germany to shoot her models in everyday life settings: in cafes and in the streets and squares of Berlin industrial districts. Later she extended her filed of interest and used to succeed in all her endeavors.  As a photojournalist for GEO and Spiegel she has traveled the world around, from Greenland to Nepal.     

In 1990, Bergemann co-founded Ostkreuz, one of the most influential German photographer agencies, and later taught photography at the agency’s photo school. In 1994, Bergemann became a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin. 

In 2000, Bergemann together with many major contemporary photographers took part in a large-scale social-oriented project Bilder die noch fehlten (Pictures That Were Still Missing) at the Hygiene Museum, Dresden. The group exhibition was dedicated to the disabled people, who were depicted in photographs as fairytale characters thanks for the photographer’s interpretation.