Barbara Metselaar Berthold

The Sum of the Parts

Barbara Metselaar-Berthold

For almost 40 years, photographer Barbara Metselaar Berthold has been collecting pictures that have accompanied her life like an imaginary museum, particularly in the context of historical transformation. Having come of age in East Germany’s dreary socialist dictatorship, the strongest early influences were the 1968 student movement and her subsequent repatriation to the West, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the commercialised world of a reunified Germany, which she takes as her point of departure. In the face of globalisation with all its possibilities and concomitant terrors, together with the digital control of all areas of life, Metselaar Berthold questions what has happened to the ideals of her generation. Which of them have remained, and what utopias exist today?
Due to their complicated and contradictory nature, she increasingly doubts the expressive power of individual images; for a long time now, she has attempted to generate connections in order to draw attention to at least a few palpable associations and their personal consequences. These can be comprehended, questioned, or redefined, and allow for multiple interpretations.