BANGALORE: Celebrated German photographer Helga Paris’ photographs are like a visual memoir of her life and times in Germany and also her travels to Romania, Georgia, Poland and others.
After an inaugural exhibition in Kochi in July, a collection of her works is currently on show at the Goethe Institut, Bangalore. “The objective is to promote international cultural exchange, to cultivate appreciation for art that transcends borders,” says Robert Paris, Helga’s son who is in India as part of the show.
Helga, one of the most influential and innovative photographers in Germany, has captured the mood of her social surroundings during the period between 60s and 90s. “The pictures are a catalogue of her experiences and memories, a manifestation of how she interacted with her environment and how she saw the people react to their surroundings,” he says.
Born in 1938, Helga witnessed the evacuation in March 1945, people being paraded in prison uniforms, bombing raids and refugee camps. This period of unrest, especially the Russian occupation after Germany's defeat in the World War II (who were there until 1994), left an indelible mark on her psyche. She chronicled the melancholic dilapidation on the streets of Berlin using her 35-mm camera. The collection has pictures of trash collectors, furniture movers and the rest who went about their lives. “Her subjects are always people — neighbours, friends, people on the street, her children and their friends,” says Robert.
In 1980, a commission to create a broad portrait of the life and times of Transylvania took her to Romania for a brief while. Back in Berlin, she trained her photographic eye on the youth and then went on to capture the essence of femininity in Georgia and later Poland. Be it a woman who is taking care of her children, clearing tables, lying peacefully in a hammock or a woman gazing at her reflection in the mirror — all of them find a place in Helga’s work. Between 1983 and 85, she began documenting the historic and architectural fabric, her source of inspiration being Halle School of Industrial Design in the central German industrial city of Halle, which epitomised the effects of industrialisation. Again, she contrasted these pictures with images of passers-by. Self-portraits are another leitmotif of Helga’s repertoire.
Groups of works on the subject of the ‘Fall of the Berlin wall’ also find a place at the exhibition.
The exhibition will be on view till August 30, between 2 and 6.30 pm. For details call 2520 5305/6/7/8 and will travel through several other cities in the South Asian region.