The opening of the Brandenburg Gate, December 22, 1989. Photo by Barbara Klemm.
German press photographer Barbara Klemm achieved the dream of many press photographers: turning her portfolio into both a work of art and a shining presentation of her country’s more recent history (even in a field and time dominated by males).
In a rare partnership, Cal State Long Beach’s University Art Museum (UAM) has paired with the Goethe-Institut to present a retrospective of Klemm’s most iconic work by way of Barbara Klemm: Light and Dark, an exhibition by the ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen).
Working for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from 1959 to 2004, Klemm’s work spans current German and world history, from the 1969 student riots in Frankfurt to the reunification of East and West Germany in 1989.
Never steering away from black-and-white analog film, Klemm describes her images as “action in condensed form.” In this exhibit, one of her strongest foci—documenting East and West Germany before and after its reunification—is highlighted by both the uncanny everyday-ness and tenseness that marked the era.
Take, for example, her now iconic image of the opening of the Brandenburg Gate on December 22, 1989 [pictured at top]. Largely considered the most vivid symbol of the border between East and West (and metaphorically the Cold War), the Brandenburg Gate acted as a passageway between East and West Berlin until the Berlin Wall was constructed on August 13, 1961. The following day, urged by then-Governor Willy Brandt of West Berlin, Westerners protested the wall in front of Brandenburg, prompting the East to close the checkpoint “until further notice”—a closure that lasted for nearly 30 years.
Following the formal fall of the wall on November 9, 1989—when the East German government formally permitted its citizens to freely cross into West Germany—Eastern workers began to physically pull the wall down on Decemeber 21 of that same year. Brandenburg Gate officially opened the following day with some 300,000 people to witness the event—one of them being Barbara Klemm, whose single image has now become a prime example of the reunification.
Of note is the fact that the exhibit will be on display during the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. To honor this, UAM will display artifacts and ephemera from the archive of Dr. Tom Frazier, CSULB Geography professor and post-reunification Berlin scholar. Additionally, the CSULB Departments of English, Film and Electronic Arts, Geography, and German Studies will be hosting lectures and film screenings throughout the semester that are free and open to the public.
Curated by German art historians Matthias Flügge and Ursula Zeller, both of whom worked closely with Klemm, the exhibit will open September 6 and run through December 14.