These wonderfully atmospheric pictures of the photographer's home town, taken nearly 30 years ago, are suffused with melancholy. Berges was one of Bernd Becher's last master students. Look out for his exhibition next year [2020] at Josef Albers Museum, Bottrop. — Staff Pick
Laurenz Berges studied at the Folkwangschule in Essen and under Bernd Becher at the Kunstakademie in Düsseldorf. He is renowned for dealing with aspects of transience in his photographs, such as the series on his home town of Cloppenburg.
“After almost thirty years I now have this work about the place where I grew up in front of me again. As I look at the photographs I took back then, I feel a sense of wonder tinged with a little sentimentality but also delight. I have never broken off my connection with this city and region, and each time I have visited since then I have noticed astonishing changes and realised that everything, however ordinary, is subject to a process of permanent change. I use my photographs to assure myself that change has indeed taken place and to preserve my memories.” — Laurenz Berges
Published on the occasion of the exhibitions at Museum für Photographie, Braunschweig (2 February – 31 March 2019) and Kunsthaus im KunstKulturQuartier, Nürnberg (27 April – 16 June 2019).
