With Will McBride the circle that Norbert Bunge had circled in 1996 with his first exhibition as gallery owner of Argus Fotokunst came full circle. It was a risk: the photographer and filmmaker, whose work is now kept in the Deutsche Kinemathek, had a trained eye, but no art dealer experience.
However, his love for photography outshone all doubts, and Bunge scored a coup with the American photography legend. Two years ago he ended his work in his gallery again with a show by Will McBride, who died in 2015. In between there were fruitful times with over a hundred exhibitions, quite a few of which were formative for Berlin: not a photography blockbuster, but some historical discoveries. Bunge, who has now died at the age of 82, has unearthed visual treasures over the years that have now become part of photographic history.
Bunge recognized talent immediately
His rooms on Marienstrasse gave space to pictures by René Burri, Leonard Freed, Clemens Kalischer and Sasha and Cami Stone. Black and white were the preferred motifs, all historically relevant and incredibly sensitive. Bunge became a pioneer who recognized talent. In many cases he initiated a renewed engagement with the work of the respective photographers and a few female photographers from past decades. Whatever Norbert Bunge showed, you could rely on his intuition.
Bunge himself came from Berlin, was born here in 1941 and grew up in the East. In 1951, the family fled to West Berlin, and he later traveled with his camera to Damascus, London, New York, Hong Kong and El Salvador. An exhibition in the Cologne Forum for Photography in 2019 was dedicated to the photographic work of the artist, who was still working as a gallery owner at the time. It was the first major retrospective outside the capital, and that alone makes Bunge’s personal restraint visible. It was least about him.
Get close without exposing
How good that the Rhineland has once again revealed the magic of its own recordings. “In his pictures, Bunge acknowledges their origins in classic black-and-white photography and demonstrates artistic compositions with craftsmanship precision,” was the statement explaining the exhibition. Bunge drew on this ability to get closer to the people of his subjects without exposing them when it came to assessing the photography of his colleagues. Argus Fotokunst has made it a unique place.