Ute Mahler

Ute Mahler (née Schirmer; born 1949) is a German photographer. In 1990 she and her husband Werner Mahler were two of the seven co-founders of the . Between 2000 and 2015, she was a professor of photography at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.

Biography Provenance and early years Ute Schirmer was born in (Sondershausen) in the countryside north of Erfurt (Thuringia) and west of Leipzig. Her birth came three weeks after the region administered as the Soviet occupation zone was rebranded and relaunched as the Soviet sponsored German Democratic Republic (East Germany). It was in the German Democratic Republic that Schirmer grew up and, for nearly two decades, built a successful career as a photographer. Many of the well judged photographs, mainly of people, for which she is celebrated today were produced during that period, in the full knowledge that there was very little likelihood that they would ever be seen by anyone other than the photographer and her friends. In East Germany she would be known to the public primarily as a fashion photographer. He was also a passionate and talented amateur photographer, taking pictures of family and friends, weddings and other celebrations in the village. When Ute was around twelve everything changed, as he relocated the family to and, in 1961 opened a photographic studio in nearby Berlin. Based in Berlin, the DEWAG had branches across the country, and was responsible for various types of public information board and posters. In 1969 she enrolled at the "Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst" (loosely, "Fine Arts Academy") in Leipzig, emerging in 1974 with a degree in photography. Shortly after she graduated, Ute Schirmer married Werner Mahler. As a freelancer she also contributed fashion images to other publications including, after 1990, the Hamburg-based weekly mass-circulation news magazine Stern. In 2014 that earned her plaudits from a reviewer in the Süddeutsche Zeitung who wrote that, "Mahler's trademark is this pared back, quiet, ostensibly casual imagery which gives her work from back then a timeless coolness"."Ute Mahlers Markenzeichen ist die reduzierte, leise, wie beiläufige Bildsprache geworden, sie gibt ihren Arbeiten von damals eine zeitlose Coolness..." "We [members of the OstKreuz co-operative] saw - still see - ourselves as documentary photographers, with a subjective perspective. I know that's a contradiction in terms, but we believe that objectivity is at best an illusion. Each photographer has his or her individual language and approach. There is nothing posed or contrived in our work. We don't have illusions" Ute Mahler interviewed by Rory MacLean in 2010 Between 2000 and 2015 she also held a university professorship at the Hamburg University of Applied Arts and Sciences.

Style "Coming from the great and rich so-called 'live photography' tradition, Mahler's visual language is undoubtedly shaped by photo-reportage. But her own highly original way of seeing things discloses her personality and her concerns far beyond what is to be found in the usual quickly assembled image-based reporting. In determining the precise moment at which a situation becomes uncompromised and communicative, sometimes unexpected, sometimes even puzzling, Mahler moves outside the limits of photography which are generally assumed to be uncrossable. In her pictures the visible elements provide just a thin outer shell, which quickly melts away as soon as the interest of the observer in the essential content of the image is awakened. That content often comprises elements that mere language can only describe in the vaguest of terms, such as joy, love, loneliness, emptiness and high-spiritedness. Or frequently some combination of them all."

Awards

1979: photokina photography prize 2011: from the Brandenburg lottery fund.

Publications Monalisen der Vorstädte: Fotografien von Ute und Werner Mahler. Verlag Meier und Müller, Berlin 2013. (deutsch, englisch) Zusammenleben. Text von Sibylle Berg. Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern 2014. Kleinstadt Fotografien von Ute und Werner Mahler, Hartmann Projects Verlag, Stuttgart 2018,

Exhibitions Zusammen Leben, Porträts von Arbeiterinnen in der DDR, 1984. Spurensuche, Galerie Ulrich Kneise, Eisenach, 2008 Das Geheimnis bleibt, Modefotografie von Ute Mahler und Schülern, Burg Giebichenstein 2011 Monalisen der Vorstädte- Fotografien von Ute und Wener Mahler. Galerie im Kloster, Obermarchtal 2013. Ute Mahler und Werner Mahler – Werkschau, Deichtorhallen, Katalog.