BERLIN.- In the exhibition FARBENRAUSCH (Colour Rush) at EMOP Berlin – European Month of Photography 2025, Galerie Springer Berlin is showing works by the photographer Ludwig Schirmer, his daughter Ute Mahler and her husband Werner Mahler. Both Ute Mahler's and Werner Mahler's colour works have rarely been shown in exhibitions so far. Also, of the previously lesser-known Ludwig Schirmer, who was one of the most important commercial photographers in the GDR, mainly black and white works have been shown so far. This unique »family exhibition« features images of remarkable quality and power. Works by Ludwig Schirmer from the years 1958 to 2000 are being presented. His pictures are characterised by their closeness to people, precise compositions and subtle humour. Werner Mahler experimented with different techniques for his landscape photographs taken between 2000 and 2005, creating atmospheric, surprising images.
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From 1998 to 2008, Ute Mahler worked on a series about the lives of great personalities, visiting places where they lived and worked. In the series »Spurensuche« (search for traces), the photographer combines the specific sites with her own subjective and intuitive images. Ute Mahler supplements the narrative combinations with fashion photographs from the early 1990s, weaving them into a new narrative thread. The poetic images question the genre boundaries of photography. This fundamental examination is something that Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler address in the exhibition, also in relation to the work of Ludwig Schirmer.
Ute Mahler completed her studies in photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig in 1974 and has worked as a freelance photographer ever since. She was a member of the Association of Visual Artists/Verband Bildender Künstler (VBK) from 1981 and founded the renowned OSTKREUZ – Agency of Photographers with six East German photographers in 1990. Since 2005, she has been a lecturer at the Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie in Berlin and held a professorship in photography at the University of Applied Sciences in Hamburg from 2000 to 2015. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall, her work was published in the GDR fashion magazine Sibylle, among others, and from 1989 she worked for national and international magazines.
She has always pursued her own artistic projects (in addition to com- missioned work and later teaching), since 2008 also together with her husband, the photographer Werner Mahler. Ute Mahler‘s work has been presented in numerous exhibitions worldwide, including the Haus der Photographie in Hamburg‘s Deichtorhallen, dedicating a large exhibition to the Mahlers work in 2014, which was shown enlarged in 2019 at the Fotomuseum Den Haag/Netherlands (“Beyond the Borders of the GDR”). In 2024, the Kunsthalle Erfurt presented the exhibition “An seltsamen Tagen über Flüsse in die Städte und Dörfer bis ans Ende der Welt with Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler & Ludwig Schirmer”. On 27th February, the exhibition “EIN DORF 1950 – 2022. Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler and Ludwig Schirmer” will open at the Akademie der Künste on Hanseatenweg as part of the EMOP 2025.
Werner Mahler was born in Boßdorf, Saxony-Anhalt in 1950. He began his photographic career in 1971 as the assistant to Ludwig Schirmer. In 1978, he completed his studies in photography at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig. In his works from the 1970s and 1980s, he documented life in the GDR in a haunting manner, for example, everyday life in a Thuringian village or work in a coal mine near Zwickau. Over the years, he has realised his humanistic view of the world in a large number of intensive photographic projects.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Werner Mahler co-founded the OST- KREUZ agency, of which he was managing director until 2019. In 2005, he and Thomas Sandberg launched the OSTKREUZSCHULE für Fotografie, which he ran until 2024. In his more recent work, he often uses historical cameras. Since 2008, he has been photographing under joint authorship with his wife Ute Mahler. The first of these series was the project “Monalisen der Vorstadt” (Mona Lisas of the Suburbs). Using a plate camera, they portrayed girls in transition, between city and countryside, childhood and maturity. The result was both a book and an exhibition project, which was awarded the 2011 Lotto Brandenburg Art Prize for Photography.
Werner Mahler and his wife Ute Mahler are considered “among the most influential representatives of East German photography”.
BIOGRAPHY OF LUDWIG SCHIRMER
1929 Born in Wenigenehrich (Thuringia), From 1947 apprenticeship as a miller, 1953 master craftsman‘s examination, 1953 – 1961 Master miller in the family watermill in Berka (Thuringia), 1950 autodidactic study of photography, first works are created in a private environment, participation in national photo competitions, 1956 first commissioned works for surrounding industrial companies, 1959 admission to the Association of German Journalists in Erfurt, 1961 ended his work as a miller, moved to Berlin and opened his own photo studio, 1961 appointed to a working group for advertising and exhibition design in Berlin (GDR), worked as a freelance photographer for foreign trade companies, industrial combines and cultural institutions in the GDR, 1964 the Berka family followed him to Lehnitz near Berlin, From 1969, he successfully participated in international photography competitions. From 1987, he took many portraits of conductors and soloists at the Schauspiel- haus theatre in Lehnitz and the Berlin Philharmonic Hall. In 1989, he had a solo exhibition at the Schauspielhaus theatre in Berlin. In 1990, he closed his photography studio in Berlin. From 2000, he worked with a camera obscura in the field of landscape and architectural photography. Ludwig Schirmer died in Berlin in 2001.
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