Wolfgang Sievers: Exhibition

Next date: Saturday, 10 June 2023 | 09:00 AM to Saturday, 01 July 2023 | 04:00 PM

Image: Full cage at start of day shift at NBHC with the senior foreman and shift-bosses in front of the miners, Broken Hill, New South Wales, 1959, Sievers, Wolfgang, 1913-2007, gelatin silver on resin coated paper ; 20.3 x 25.2 cm, National Library of Australia

 

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One of Australia’s great 20th century photographers, Wolfgang Sievers was famous for his macho images of machines, factories, and mines. Beautiful as artwork in their own rights, they are also valuable records of postwar Australian industry and an insight into the spirit of the times – the promise and optimism of the mid-century machine age.

Born in Berlin, Germany in 1913, Wolfgang Sievers grew up in the creative era of the Weimer Republic. He began taking photographs of architecture as a teenager and progressed to studying photography.

Imbued with the Bauhaus sensibility and purity of line, factors which profoundly influenced modernist design and architecture, it was in photographing the forms and shapes within industry that Sievers found his creative passion.

Sievers own experiences in Nazi Germany as well as his exposure to the workers of industry and to industrial sites had a great influence on his social conscience. He became an active advocate for human rights and took great interest in social issues.

Broken Hill is fortunate in having a body of work by Sievers from two decades – the 1950s and 1980. The works in the exhibition are selected on their aesthetic merit and to show a broad representation of different facets of mining in the city.

When

Location

Albert Kersten Mining and Minerals Museum (GeoCentre), Corner of Bromide & Crystal Streets, Broken Hill, 2880, View Map