The exhibition was conceived and prepared in collaboration with Sibylle Bergemann and finalised with the help of Arno Fischer and Frieda von Wild. Arno Fischer, Bernd Heise and Frieda von Wild also edited the two publications released to mark the exhibition: *Die Polaroids* published by Hatje Cantz and *Fenster* published by edition braus.
"FENSTER"
"Fenster" is Sibylle Bergemann's first, previously unpublished group of works. The choice of motif arose from her reluctance to point the camera at people. "Windows are people too," she said in her characteristic laconic manner. The motif also plays an important role in her other works.
Matthias Flügge in the catalogue: "Windows are first and foremost geometric shapes on a surface, prominent elements of pictorial organisation. Perhaps the photographer was particularly attracted by the wealth of meanings associated with the simple forms. Sibylle Bergemann's windows are truly like the eyes of people, in which their history and something of their soul is reflected. They tell of the long-lasting consequences of the war in German cities as well as of moments of utmost privacy, of the need for jewellery and the acceptance of neglect, of the spaces of nature in the cities and of the facelessness of some architecture. The pictures are far from critical or even accusatory - but they are socially accurate."
"POLAROIDS"
Jutta Voigt writes in "Sibylle Bergemann - The Polaroids": Sibylle Bergemann's poetic Polaroids are often by-products of commissioned works, a beautiful uselessness, training of the imagination, notes of a romantic. "Sometimes you want to write love poems," comments Arno Fischer on these pictures. The artist allied herself with the Polaroid, taking the garishness and loudness out of the conventional colour photo, giving it patina and atmosphere. She experimented with the effects, playing with the oddities. She animated things that are lifeless in a rational reality and played with the possibility that things have a soul ... With her "belletristic gaze - belle et triste, beautiful and sad - she captured still lifes in the Polaroids, objects, environments and milieus, worn stairs and bare facades, apple trees, tulips in the snow, the children's parties at the Academy of Arts with princesses, angels and fine ladies. The highlight is the portraits of the costumed disabled actors of the RambaZamba theatre - "platforms for individuality, lookout towers of humanity, beyond the lowlands of affectation attitudes".
