Laurenz Berges

Laurenz Berges is a German photographer. He is associated with the Düsseldorf School of Photography.

Early career

Berges studied communication design at the University of Essen from 1986 to 1993, where he graduated with a diploma. In 1988 and 1989, Berges worked as a photo assistant for the photographer Evelyn Hofer in New York. He studied photography at Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, since 1992. He graduated as a Master Student under Bernd Becher, in 1996. Berges lives and works in Düsseldorf. Berges' work is held in several important museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

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 focus on Etzweiler, the district of Elsdorf that had to make way for open-pit lignite mining. He has photographed for years the wastelands in the de-industrialized city of Duisburg. Berges finds his subjects in the urban gray areas. He is particularly interested by the details from abandoned apartments, vacated houses, and overgrown gardens, 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 the photographic equivalent of 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, 2010. Germany: Schirmer/Mosel, 2010. Edited by Stefan Gronert. Includes work by Bernd and Hilla Becher, Berges, Elger Esser, Andreas Gursky, Candida Höfer, Axel Hütte, Simone Nieweg, Thomas Ruff, 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..

Public collections

Berges' work is held, among others, in the following public collections:

Musée d'Art Moderne de Paris, Paris, France: 6 prints
Museum of Modern Art, New York: 2 prints
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California: 2 prints