Ute Mahler - The Same Sky - (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

This book presents a wide selection of the pictures that made her famous, first in the GDR photographing for the legendary fashion and culture magazine "Sibylle", then in unified Germany and later on more and more internationally with exhibitions in The Hague, Arles, now Japan

Ute Mahler began working in fashion photography back
in 1975, right after graduating from the HGB Leipzig, even
though fashion photography was only of casual interest to
her at the time. She was primarily interested in people and
their facial expressions, which is perhaps why, when looking
at her photos, you always notice the face first and the clothes
second. Taken out of the context of a magazine spread or
an ad, many of her photos could easily be seen as part of a
documentary project. Models and people always seem to be
caught entirely by chance the moment Ute Mahler presses
the shutter - that makes her pictures so unique: staging
women (and sometimes men) and fashion almost effortlessly,
just like in real life.
This book presents a wide selection of the pictures that
made her famous, first in the GDR photographing for the
legendary fashion and culture magazine Sibylle, then in unified Germany and later on more and more internationally with
exhibitions in The Hague, Arles and now Japan.
German novelist and journalist Annett Gröschner admired
Ute Mahler's work from a young age. She shares a personal
essay describing how she came to know and love Ute Mahler
and her pictures. Texts by Ute Mahler and Johanna Eckhardt
describe the biographical, historical and cultural backgrounds
that have influenced the photographer and her work to
this day. They also chronicle her career path, the history of
Sibylle magazine and the editorial team's self-image, which is
beautifully reflected in Ute Mahler's photography.

About the Author

Ute Mahler completed her studies in photography at the Academy of Visual 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 commissioned 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").

The photographer has received numerous awards for her work; together with Werner Mahler, she received the Lotto Brandenburg Art Prize for Photography in 2011 and the German Photography Book Prize for the comprehensive publication "Werkschau" in 2015. In 2019, the Art Directors Club awarded Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler the ADC Silver Nail for their photography booklet "Deutsche Kleinstädte" ("Small German Towns") by Zeitmagazin. In the same year, the Mahlers were awarded the David Octavius Hill Medal by the German Photographic Academy. In 2013, Ute Mahler, together with 17 colleagues from the OSTKREUZ agency, received the Konrad Wolf Prize of the Academy of Arts for outstanding artistic achievement.