Tina Bara

Last updated

Tina Bara
Born18 March 1962
Kleinmachnow, Brandenburg, GDR (East Germany)
OccupationPhotographer

Tina Bara (born 18 March 1962, in Kleinmachnow) is a German photographer [1] who began her career in the German Democratic Republic [2] [3] Her work was featured in several exhibitions at key galleries and museums, including the Galerie Eigen + Art, Leipzig and the Kunsthalle Erfurt. In MutualArt’s artist press archive, Tina Bara is featured in Interference, a piece from the Revista Arta in 2020.

Contents

Before reunification, she was in touch with peace movement in the German Democratic Republic.

Life

Bara was born just outside Berlin, but grew up in Guben, [4] then on what had since 1945, been the frontier of the German Democratic Republic with Poland.

In 1980, she moved back to Berlin, and from 1980 to 1986, attended the Humboldt University of Berlin, where she studied History and Art History. As a student, she was in touch with political opposition groups, including Frauen für den Frieden (Women for Peace). [1] (The German Democratic Republic was hosting more than 300,000 Soviet troops at the time. [5] ) While still at university Bara held her first exhibition at the regional Public Arts House at Berlin-Treptow. In 1986 she joined the East German League of Image Artists as a freelance photographer. [1] [4] During this time, her commissions included work on documentary films for DEFA, the state-owned film company, including flüstern & SCHREIEN – Ein Rockreport, [6] a major documentary project lasting three years and headed up by Dieter Schumann.

In 1986, Bara started a correspondence course in photography with the Academy of Visual Arts in Leipzig. However, this was becoming a period of increasing political instability for the German Democratic Republic and she discontinued the course in 1989 without, at this stage, receiving a qualification. Instead, in July 1989, a few months before the Berlin wall fell, she found she was able to emigrate through the "Inner frontier" and relocated to West Berlin, where she pursued a career as a freelance artist-photographer, [1] also working on video documentaries. [4]

In 1991, she received, belatedly, a diploma with de:Arno Fischer (Fotograf)Arno Fischer from the Leipzig Academy of Visual Arts where, since 1993, she has held a professorship [1] in photography. [4]

Work

Bara's self taught method of photography in which she films the female body in close range conveys a sense of societal discomfort. This was illustrated in her 1988 work, o.T. (Untitled) in fourteen parts. Bara's critical and political consciousness was shaped by her participation in Frauen fur den Frieden, and explored through her autobiographical photography, in which her understanding of self and the world was mirrored. She stated in 2009 that, "My female gaze arose from my biography and from my personal search for identity. A distancing feminist self-assertion was not our thing." [7]

Related Research Articles

Ulrike Ottinger German filmmaker and photographer (born 1942)

Ulrike Ottinger is a German filmmaker and photographer.

Sibylle Bergemann

Sibylle Bergemann was a German photographer. In 1990, she co-founded the Ostkreuz photographers agency. She is remembered for documenting developments in East Berlin during the Communist era and for her international assignments for Stern and later for Geo.

Günter Rössler

Günter Rössler was a German photographer who made a name for himself especially in the field of nude art photography. A pioneer of nude photography in East Germany and notable fashion photographer, Rössler was often referred to by the media as the Helmut Newton of East Germany, stylized since Playboy published in 1984 a photo-gallery titled: Mädchen der DDR. Rössler however, never liked this comparison with Newton, saying: "with Newton the pose dominates, with me it is about the highest possible authenticity of the girls". Rössler significantly contributed to the history of German photography in the second half of the twentieth century, earning him recognition not only as a great photographer, but also as the "old master of German nude photography".

Barbara Metselaar Berthold is a German photographer and filmmaker.

Hildegard Ochse was a German photographer.

Alba D'Urbano is a textile and video artist.

Arno Fischer

Arno Fischer was a German photographer and university teacher.

Roger Melis was a German photographer specialising in portraiture, photo-journalism and fashion photography.

Helga Paris

Helga Paris is a German photographer known, among other things, for her photographs of daily life in East Germany.

Erika Stürmer-Alex German artist (born 1938)

Erika Stürmer-Alex is a German artist whose works include wall paintings, panel paintings, printed graphics, collage sculptures, polyester sculptures and installations.

Michael Weidt is a German photographer. He is known, in particular, for his portraits of East German theatre and movie stars. His repertoire has also covered the worlds of music, dance and the visual arts more generally.

Elsa Thiemann

Elsa Thiemann was a German photographer and former Bauhaus student. She also designed wallpaper based on photograms.

Evelyn Richter is a German photographer known primarily for social documentary photography work in East Germany. She is notable for her black and white photography documenting working class life, which often showed influences of Dadaism and futurism.

Dorothea Melis was a German fashion journalist.

Ursula Arnold was a German photographer. Much of her best known work involves street scenes in Berlin and Leipzig produced during the German Democratic Republic years. Living under a one-party government which valued visual artistry as a device for influence and control over the people, she was described as "one of those artists who could not easily be integrated". She said : "If I ask myself if there's a different reality for me [as a woman rather than as a man], then the answer is [one to a different question]: not to belong to the rulers. My sympathies belong to those who are not part of the ruling establishment".

Gundula Schulze Eldowy German photographer (born 1954)

Gundula Schulze Eldowy is a German photographer. In addition to her photographic and film work, she has created stories, poems, essays, sound collages and songs.

Sibylle was a bimonthly fashion magazine that was published in East Germany and then in Germany from 1956 to 1994. The magazine was subtitled Zeitschrift für Mode und Kultur. It is known as the most famous fashion magazine of East Germany.

Ute Mahler is a German photographer. In 1990 she and her husband Werner Mahler were two of the seven co-founders of the "Ostkreuz" photography agency. Between 2000 and 2015, she was a professor of photography at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Anke Scharnhorst. "Bara, Tina * 18.3.1962 Fotografin". Bundesstiftung zur Aufarbeitung der SED-Diktatur: Biographische Datenbanken. Retrieved 7 January 2015.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
  2. ↑ "Ausstellungen im November .... Berlin". Der Spiegel (online). 26 October 2009. Retrieved 7 January 2015.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
  3. ↑ "Tina Bara | Artist Profile with Bio". www.mutualart.com. Retrieved 20 May 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "tina bara". Alba D'Urbano & Tina Bara. Retrieved 7 January 2015.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
  5. ↑ Serge Schemann (17 December 1990). "Soviet Troops in Germany Become Army of Refugees". New York Times (online). Retrieved 7 January 2015.CS1 maint: discouraged parameter (link)
  6. ↑ "flüstern & SCHREIEN DDR 1988, Dokumentarfilm .... Foto Tina Bara".
  7. ↑ Medea muckt auf : Radikale Künstlerinnen hinter dem Eisernen Vorhang = The Medea insurrection : radical women artists behind the Iron Curtain. Altmann, Susanne,, Lozo, Katarina,, Wagner, Hilke, 1972–, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden,, Wende Museum (Culver City, Calif.). Köln. 2019. ISBN   978-3-96098-527-3. OCLC   1099843511.CS1 maint: others (link)
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.