Katharina Sieverding (born 16 November 1941) is a German
photographer
A photographer (the Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who uses a camera to make photographs.
Duties and types of photograp ...
known for her self-portraiture. Sieverding lives and works in
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
and
Düsseldorf
Düsseldorf is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in the state after Cologne and the List of cities in Germany with more than 100,000 inhabitants, seventh-largest city ...
. She is a professor emeritus at the
University of the Arts, Berlin.
Early life and education
Sieverding was born in
Prague
Prague ( ; ) is the capital and List of cities and towns in the Czech Republic, largest city of the Czech Republic and the historical capital of Bohemia. Prague, located on the Vltava River, has a population of about 1.4 million, while its P ...
,
in the then
Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia
The Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was a partially-annexation, annexed territory of Nazi Germany that was established on 16 March 1939 after the Occupation of Czechoslovakia (1938–1945), German occupation of the Czech lands. The protector ...
, to German parents. She grew up in the
Ruhr
The Ruhr ( ; , also ''Ruhrpott'' ), also referred to as the Ruhr Area, sometimes Ruhr District, Ruhr Region, or Ruhr Valley, is a polycentric urban area in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population density of 1,160/km2 and a populati ...
region. She began studying art at the
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1964.
There she started studying stage design alongside
Georg Klusemann and
Jörg Immendorff under
Teo Otto
Teo Otto (1904–1968) was a Swiss Scenographer, stage designer.Banham (1998, 830). He trained in Kassel and Paris and in 1926 taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar.Baugh (1994, 252). In 1928 he became an assistant at the Berlin Staatsoper. Followin ...
, but later joined the sculpture class taught by
Joseph Beuys
Joseph Heinrich Beuys ( ; ; 12 May 1921 – 23 January 1986) was a German artist, teacher, performance artist, and Aesthetics, art theorist whose work reflected concepts of humanism and sociology. With Heinrich Böll, , Caroline Tisdall, Rober ...
in 1967.
Her fellow students included
Blinky Palermo and
Imi Knoebel. Between 1971 and 1974, she was part of the film class at the
Kunstakademie. In 1976, she took part in the Independent Study Program at the
Whitney Museum of American Art
The Whitney Museum of American Art, known informally as "The Whitney", is a Modern art, modern and Contemporary art, contemporary American art museum located in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan, Meatpacking District and West Village neighbor ...
.
Work
Sieverding's works consist of self-portraiture and most have an abstract quality. She uses the techniques of silhouette, contrast, and extreme close-up to make the photograph more revealing of herself. She tinted all the prints in one 1969 series a deep scarlet, and for another painted her face gold.
Holland Cotter
Holland Cotter is an American writer and co-chief art critic with ''The New York Times''. In 2009, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.
Life and work
Cotter was born in Connecticut and grew up in Boston, Massachusetts. He earned his A.B. fr ...
(November 12, 2004)
For New Art, Just Take The 7 Train
''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...
''. Her work often makes statements about society and the individual, such as showing the familiarity of the self and the distance of others. Often she puts multiple portraits together in one piece. Each portrait fills the frame in a way to show the presence of self.
''Maton'' (1969–1972),
one of the first photographic series, comprises composite portraits of the artist staged in a photo booth. These portraits resurface in a series of 16 larger-than-life photographs of Sieverding in Stauffenberg-Block, from 1969, the title of which refers to German officer
Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg, who made a failed attempt to assassinate
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (20 April 1889 – 30 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was the dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his suicide in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the lea ...
in 1944.
Viewed in sequence, the expressions of the faces remain fixed—mouth closed, unsmiling, eyes tilted slightly upward. Experimenting with the medium, Sieverding solarized the silver gelatin originals and then used a red filter to tint the images.
In the 56-part series ''Die Sonne um Mitternacht schauen (To Look at the Sun at Midnight)'' (1973) shows individual portraits of the artist's face painted in shimmering gold dust.
Another work, ''Motorkamera'' (1973/1974) consists of 336 individual black and white portraits of Sieverding and her partner Klaus Mettig engaged in a series of intimate postures.
This is the departure point for another seminal series from this period, ''Transformer'' (1973), which features large format projections of multi-layered androgynous portraits.
A later large-scale multi-media installation, ''Untitled (Ultramarine)'' (1993), is a series of eight self-portraits, each having three parts, united by a vertical band of electric blue pigment.
Since 1975, Sieverding, along with Mettig, has also made political statements through her photography using both German and American history as the basis. During 1976–78, the artist traveled to China and America, accumulating visual propaganda to further explore the symbolic communications at play in mass-marketed imagery and text. One example is the monumental four-part photograph ''IX'', taken on a New York City rooftop during Sieverding's one-year stay in the city in 1977. In this photo, Sieverding is enveloped in a sea of black, one hand grasping a glass, and the other placed atop her head. Referencing the notorious
blackout in New York on the summer night of July 13, 1977, the words "THE GREAT WHITE WAY GOES BLACK" are printed across her face.
Her work has frequently triggered debates on contemporary society, politics, social and cultural issues, one example being her poster installations ''Deutschland wird Deutscher'' of 1993, which she did in collaboration with
Klaus Biesenbach
Klaus Biesenbach (born 1966)Erica Orden (December 26, 2009)Herr Zeitgeist''New York Magazine''. is a German-American curator and museum director. He is the Director of the Neue Nationalgalerie, with Berggruen Museum and Scharf-Gerstenberg Colle ...
, and ''Die Pleite'' of 2005 in Greater Berlin. In 1992, Sieverding was commissioned to design the memorial to the parliamentarians persecuted in the
Weimar Republic
The Weimar Republic, officially known as the German Reich, was the German Reich, German state from 1918 to 1933, during which it was a constitutional republic for the first time in history; hence it is also referred to, and unofficially proclai ...
. It is on display at the
Reichstag in Berlin. In 1995, she organized the lecture series "Never mind the nineties" together with Klaus Biesenbach, who studied freie Kunst at the HDK (
Berlin University of the Arts
The Universität der Künste Berlin (UdK; also known in English as the Berlin University of the Arts), situated in Berlin, Germany, is the second largest art school in Europe. It is a public art and design school, and one of the four research uni ...
) with Katharina Sieverding from 1993 to 1998.
While a visiting professor at the
China Academy of Art
The China Academy of Art (CAA; ) is a provincial public college of fine arts in Hangzhou. Zhejiang, China. It is affiliated with the Province of Zhejiang. The academy is part of the Double First-Class Construction
The World First-Class Un ...
in Hangzhou/Shanghai, Sieverding produced the film ''Shanghai'' (2002–2003). The film, consisting of two five-minute loops, documents the street life in and around the city.
Notable photographs
* “The Great White Way Goes Black”
* ”Stauffenberg-Block”
* ”Motorkamera”
* ”XVII”
* ”Die Sonne um Mitternacht schauen”
* ”Untitled (Ultramarine)”
* ”Maton”
Films
* ”Life-Death”
* ”Beijing, Yanan, Xian, Luoyang”
* ”Shanghai”
Major exhibitions
Sieverding took part in
documenta
Documenta (often stylized documenta) is an Art exhibition, exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany.
Documenta was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgarte ...
5 in 1972,
documenta
Documenta (often stylized documenta) is an Art exhibition, exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany.
Documenta was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgarte ...
6 in 1977 and
documenta
Documenta (often stylized documenta) is an Art exhibition, exhibition of contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany.
Documenta was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgarte ...
7 in 1982, Kassel, and in 1997 she exhibited in the German pavilion at the
Venice Biennale
The Venice Biennale ( ; ) is an international cultural exhibition hosted annually in Venice, Italy. There are two main components of the festival, known as the Art Biennale () and the Venice Biennale of Architecture, Architecture Biennale (), ...
. Her solo exhibitions include:
Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (1998);
Stedelijk Museum
The Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (; Municipal Museum Amsterdam), colloquially known as the Stedelijk, is a museum for modern art, contemporary art, and design located in Amsterdam, Netherlands. , Amsterdam (1998);
Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf (1997–98);
Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art
The KW Institute for Contemporary Art (also known as Kunst-Werke) is a contemporary art institution located in Auguststraße 69 in Berlin-Mitte, Germany. Klaus Biesenbach was the founding director of KW; the current director is Emma Enderby.
KW ...
, Berlin (1993);
Neue Nationalgalerie
The Neue Nationalgalerie (New National Gallery) at the Kulturforum is a museum for modern art in Berlin, with its main focus on the 20th century. It is part of the National Gallery of the Berlin State Museums. The museum building and its sculpt ...
, Berlin (1992). Collective exhibition: "Objectivités – La photographie à Düsseldorf" –
Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (2008) C
Les Rencontres d'Arles, France (2010). In the United States, her works have been shown at
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum
The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, often referred to as The Guggenheim, is an art museum at 1071 Fifth Avenue between 88th and 89th Street (Manhattan), 89th Streets on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City. It hosts a permanent coll ...
, New York;
Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh;
Dallas Museum of Art
The Dallas Museum of Art (DMA) is an art museum located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, along Woodall Rodgers Freeway between St. Paul and Harwood. In the 1970s, the museum moved from its previous location in Fair Park to the A ...
, Dallas;
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a multidisciplinary contemporary art center in the Lowry Hill, Minneapolis, Lowry Hill neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is one of the most-visited modern and contemporary art museums in ...
, Minneapolis; and
ICA, Boston. In 2004 and 2005, New York's
MoMA PS1
MoMA PS1 is a contemporary art institution at 2201 Jackson Avenue in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens in New York City, United States. In addition to its exhibitions, the institution organizes the Sunday Sessions performance series, th ...
and
Kunst-Werke Berlin presented an extensive survey of her work.
References and links
Sources
* Fricke, Harald.
Intimacy on a Large Scale: A Conversation with Katharina Sieverding ''db artmag.''
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sieverding, Katharina
Photographers from Berlin
Living people
German portrait photographers
1944 births
Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni
German women photographers
German contemporary artists
Photographers from Prague