Laurenz Berges (born

Cloppenburg Cloppenburg (; nds, Cloppenborg; stq, Kloppenbuurich) is a town in Lower Saxony, Germany, capital of Cloppenburg District and part of Oldenburg Münsterland. It lies 38 km south-south-west of Oldenburg in the Weser-Ems region between Brem ...

, 1966) is a German photographer. He graduated from the

Kunstakademie Düsseldorf The Kunstakademie Düsseldorf is the academy of fine arts of the state of North Rhine Westphalia at the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Notable artists who studied or taught at the academy include Joseph Beuys, Gerhard Richter, Magdalena Jetelová ...

as Master Student under

Bernd Becher Bernd is a Low German short form of the given name Bernhard (English Bernard). List of persons with given name Bernd The following people share the name Bernd. *Bernd Brückler (born 1981), Austrian hockey player *Bernd Eichinger (1949–2011), ...

in 1996. Berges' work is held in the collections of the

Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...

in New York and the

San Francisco Museum of Modern Art The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) is a modern and contemporary art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art, and wa ...

Work

Berges' photographic work focuses primarily on transience. Between 1991 and 1995, Berges photographed the interiors of East German barracks that had been abandoned by the Red Army after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In his book Etzweiler, Berges documented Etzweiler, the district of Elsdorf that had to make way for open-pit lignite mining. For years, the artist also photographed wastelands in the de-industrialized city of Duisburg. Berges finds his subjects in the urban gray areas: It is details from abandoned apartments, vacated houses, and overgrown gardens that interest him and that he makes the subject of a poetic, yet strictly documentary pictorial composition. In view of these photographs from the no-man's land between use and decay, recent past and foreseeable future, one could almost speak of photographic Arte Povera.

Publications

Books of work by Berges

*''Fotografien 1991–1995''. Schirmer/Mosel, 2000. . With a text by Ulrich Bischoff. *''Etzweiler''. Schirmer/Mosel, 2005. . With a text by Michael Lentz. *''Frühauf – Danach''. Schirmer/Mosel, 2011. . With a text by Thomas Weski. *''Cloppenburg''. Kunstkreis, 2010. Edited by Barbara Hofmann-Johnson. . Texts in English and German.

Publications with contributions by Berges

*''The Düsseldorf School of Photography''. New York:

Aperture In optics, an aperture is a hole or an opening through which light travels. More specifically, the aperture and focal length of an optical system determine the cone angle of a bundle of rays that come to a focus in the image plane. An ...

, 2010. Germany: Schirmer/Mosel, 2010. Edited by Stefan Gronert. Includes work by

Bernd and Hilla Becher Bernhard "Bernd" Becher (; 20 August 1931 – 22 June 2007), and Hilla Becher, née Wobeser (2 September 1934 – 10 October 2015), were German conceptual artists and photographers working as a collaborative duo. They are best known for their e ...

, Berges,

Elger Esser Elger Esser (born 11 May 1967) is a German landscape photographer, living in Düsseldorf. "He is primarily associated with large-format images of European lowlands with his characteristic low horizon lines, pale luminous colours and vast skies". ...

Andreas Gursky Andreas Gursky (born 15 January 1955) is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany. He is known for his large format architecture and landscape colour photographs, often using a high point of view. His works ...

Candida Höfer Candida Höfer (born 4 February 1944) is a German photographer. She is a former student of Bernd and Hilla Becher. Like other Becher students, Höfer's work is known for technical perfection and a strictly conceptual approach. From 1997 to 2000, ...

Axel Hütte Axel Hütte (born 1951) is a German photographer. He is considered one of main representatives of the Düsseldorf School of Photography. Biography Hütte was born in the German city of Essen in 1951. He studied photography in Düsseldorf Art A ...

, Simone Nieweg,

Thomas Ruff Thomas Ruff (born 10 February 1958) is a German photographer who lives and works in Düsseldorf, Germany. He has been described as "a master of edited and reimagined images". Ruff shares a studio on Düsseldorf's Hansaallee, with fellow German ...

, Jörg Sasse, Thomas Struth, and Petra Wunderlich; a foreword by Lothar Schirmer, an essay by Gronert, and summary biographies, exhibition lists and bibliographies for each of the photographers. .

Collections

Berges' work is held in the following public collections: *

, New York: 2 prints (as of December 2020) *

, San Francisco, California: 2 prints (as of December 2020)

References

External links

* 20th-century German photographers 21st-century German photographers Kunstakademie Düsseldorf alumni University of Duisburg-Essen alumni People from Cloppenburg Living people 1966 births {{Germany-photographer-stub