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Born in 1974 in Karlsruhe (Germany).
Lives and works in Berlin.
Website : http://www.sibyllefendt.de/
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Sibylle Fendt is back at the Biennale of Liege with her latest project, the series "Gärtners Reise", after having exhibited her series "Uneins" with us in 2008.
Born in Karlsruhe, Germany in 1974, Sibylle Fendt studied photography and art history at the Technical University of Karlsruhe and at the Germany University of Applied Sciences in Bielefeld and attended Wolfgang Tillmans’ course at the Städel -Art Academy in Frankfurt. She currently lives in Berlin where she teaches photography at the Ostkreuzschule.
In summer 2008, Lothar Gärtner and his wife Elke decided to dare a big voyage – most probably their last one. They had been traveling Europe on caravan all of their joint lives. Two years before, Elke had come down with Alzheimer's disease. Lothar wished to care for her in their common house as long as possible and accompany her on her way.
In March 2008 Sibylle Fendt started to take photographs of Lothar and Elke in their home.
In August and September 2008 she accompanied them on their last voyage to Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Saint Petersburg and back home.
The pictures that emerged from this are no travel documents. They are symbols for a journey into unknown terrain.
In February 2009, Elke died completely unexpectedly as a result of a heavy fall.
A retired couple making the most of their time to travel in a mobile home is a rather pleasant idea. Yet on Sibylle Fendt’s photographs, something is wrong: on some of them, the woman has a completely absent look, she is lost, and on others she seems to be shouting or crying violently, but nothing in the photograph explains what could be wrong.
Her companion does not smile much; he seems to be both her tender protector and watchdog, supporting her, helping her, loving her...
Memories of past years are the last to be destroyed by Alzheimer's diseas ; it first attacks the short-term memory, the hours and days which have just gone by, but it leaves old memories their strength, before absorbing them forever and taking away any reference the sufferer has as to their own existence. This last trip, the last lap of old memories, closes the circle; a last opportunity to see the things which had to be seen one last time.
The work of Sibylle Fendt is as much a reflection of a gradual disappearance as it is a reflection of what resists and remains in the history of this couple, devoured little by little by the gap in Elke’s memory. The photographer captures the relationship and solitude - the places visited being more a pretext for capturing the position of the body, looks and gestures. Sometimes she is very close to the couple or to one of them, sometimes she is far away; she seems to be both an insider and outsider. She is also looking for ways to escape from the story, from this trip that so tested her; she finds such escape routes particularly in landscapes – they are a way of clearing her eyes and airing her view so that she can better focus on the couple moving inexorably towards the end.
Sibylle Fendt is fascinated by mental illness. One may think that what interests her about these people is that they cannot or will not wear masks, everything is raw and demands great respect from the photographer to not fall into the trap of vulgarity or sensationalism . This is, of course, one of Sibylle Fendt’s qualities. Another is managing, with these pictures, to make us understand that her characters are not so different from what we are, will or could be one day.
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