Image: Galerie Springer Berlin ; UteMahler 354
A forthcoming exhibition at Berlin’s Kommunale Galerie Pankow will bring together Ute Mahler’s fashion photography from the 1980s and a later photographic essay made for the FAZ magazine. Titled ‘Derselbe Himmel – Modefotografie’, the exhibition runs from 2 September to 1 November 2026, with an opening on 1 September at 7 p.m.
The presentation focuses on the series Mahler created for ‘Sibylle’, the East German magazine for fashion and culture. According to Galerie Pankow, the exhibition will show all of the bodies of work she produced on this subject for the magazine during the 1980s, alongside the photo essay published in the FAZ magazine in 2020. The selection places the fashion images within Mahler’s broader interest in portraiture, particularly in the representation of women and their position in society.
Mahler’s fashion photographs are closely connected to her portraits: clothing is present, but the people wearing it remain a defining element of the images. Her work for ‘Sibylle’ developed within the conditions of fashion publishing in the German Democratic Republic, while retaining a strong emphasis on faces, gestures and individual presence. The exhibition’s title and scope link this early work to a later commission rather than treating fashion photography as a separate episode in her practice.
Born in 1949 in Berka, Mahler completed her photography studies at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig in 1974 and has worked as a freelance photographer since then. In 1990, she founded the OSTKREUZ photographers’ agency with six East German photographers. She has taught at the Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie in Berlin since 2005 and held a photography professorship at Hamburg University of Applied Sciences from 2000 to 2015. Since 2008, she has also worked with her husband, Werner Mahler, under joint authorship on long-term projects addressing political, social and personal conditions.
An accompanying publication, ‘Ute Mahler. Derselbe Himmel. Frauen, Künstlerinnen, Freundinnen. Modefotografie von 1975 bis 1994’, is being published by Hartmann Books. The German-language book has approximately 292 pages and 200 illustrations, with texts by Annett Gröschner, Ute Mahler and Johanna Eckhardt. It is designed by Lamm&Kirch and issued as a linen-bound volume measuring 24 by 30 centimetres. Hartmann Books lists 14 September 2026 as the delivery date for the publication, which has the ISBN 978-3-96070-075-3.
The exhibition is supported by the Exhibition Fund of the Municipal Galleries of Berlin and organised in cooperation with the Leonhardi Museum in Dresden. Its public programme includes a book presentation and artist conversation with Anne Waak on 10 September at 7 p.m., followed by a reading with Annett Gröschner on 15 October at 7:30 p.m. Galerie Springer Berlin, which circulated notice of the exhibition, will host a separate book signing with Mahler at its Fasanenstraße 13 premises on 14 October at 7 p.m. The exhibition itself remains at Kommunale Galerie Pankow from 2 September through 1 November 2026.
