Sabine Felber (Master of Arts)
Master's degree in Sociology and Politics
1997 to 1999 photo classes with Oliver Scholten
2000 begins to work as a freelance photographer
selected exhibitions and projects
2023
"zusammenTun", solo exhibition photography and 15 minutes documentary film, Naumburg
2019
"Würde. Selbst. Wählen", solo exhibition photography, sound, digital stories, parliament of the German Federal Land Saxony-Anhalt, Magdeburg
2018
"Würde. Selbst. Wählen", solo exhibition photography, sound, digital stories, Museum Weißenfels, Weißenfels
2016
"Ein Foto kommt selten allein", group exhibition photography, Museum of Photography, Berlin
2015
"see my story", bangaloREsidency Goethe-Institut Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore, photography, text and digital stories, Bangalore
2014
"Retrato Brasileiro", photography and text, Brazilian Embassy, Berlin
2012
"Ansehen", autobiographical photography - women in prison, 32 selfportraits, Vechta
2011
"pause - for a moment", photography, text by Franziska Berge, Berlin
"UN-Interns", photography, text by Chris Baker, New York
2007
"More Asia", solo exhibition photography and text during the Asia-Pacific weeks Berlin, room4art, Berlin
2006
"Flüchtige Begegnung", solo exhibition photography and text, Gallery Jan Schlütter, Cologn
2005
"Things I never told you", photo-artist of the year 2005, bitkom e.V., Berlin
2003
"Stadt Träume III", solo exhibition photography, Rotes Rathaus zu Berlin, Berlin
2002
"Stadt Träume II", group exhibition photography and text , KunstWinter-Berlin, Berlin
"Stadt Träume I" solo exhibition photography and text , shee Gallery, Berlin
2001
"Foto Bild Berlin", contemporary photography fair, Stilwerk, Berlin
"Half way to the moon" solo exhibition photography and text , EXISTART – Container, Berlin
"Urban Drawings" video Sabine Felber, for the artist Adalgisa Campos, temporary action in public spaces, Paris, Berlin
2000
"Der Elf Uhr Zug" slideshow as part of the program of the singer-songwriter Corinne Douarre, Grüner Salon der Volksbühne, Berlin
"Aufgeweckt" group exhibition, Schönhauser, Berlin
1999
"photostock" international group exhibition, Mack Gallery, Sarajevo Bosnien (BiH)
"stand stills" photo-text-installation with Franziska Berge, Akademie der Künste zu Berlin and Literaturhaus, Munich
"Hong Kong connection" photo installation, Schönhauser, Berlin
"wrapped" 16mm film, 3 minutes, colour: Concept, production and performance: Leta Hong Fincher, Vikki Weston, Sabine Felber
Gérard A. Goodrow
Dreams & Trauma. Photos for freedom of the press,
Sabine Felber’s “City Dreams”
It is Felber’s fine craftsmanship of transporting empathy
into her images that makes her work her own.
The German photographer Sabine Felber systematically stages social living spaces in the major international metropolises of the “Global Village” – in Berlin, Hong Kong, Paris, Peking and Sydney, among others.
In her comprehensive series, “City Dreams”, metropolises are not only depicted as places of encounter, but also as places of isolation.
Felber’s interest in this subject matter is of no surprise; besides her keen interest and work in photography, she also studied sociology in Heidelberg.
The series “City Dreams” is an intensively researched study of “world cities” as well as an intimate and empathetic portrait of the individuals that inhabit these metropolises.
A society consists of a conglomeration of individuals – millions of individual people with their very own personal life stories. When we think of metropolitan cities, we associate them with masses of people, crowds and a fast-paced environment.
Felber’s portraits of people in metropolitan societies are not only representations of the individual, but also social depictions of the individual metropolises.
Sabine Felber is a “participant observer”. Originally a term applied in cultural anthropology (a subject area very closely related to sociology), the term refers to a technique used to study the life of a group by participating in its activities.
As preparation for her photo shoots and capturing the peculiarities and idiosyncrasies of the different metropolises, Felber reads the texts of authors native to the area, talks to the city’s inhabitants and searches for the corresponding public spaces.
She chooses a specific angle and waits, waits and waits – with the patient of a saint – for the right moment.
Like her Swiss colleague, Beat Streuli, Sabine Felber is interested in what “moves” people in metropolises, physically as well as psychologically.
Relationships between people – between man and the environment or architecture – play an important role.
Although the people and the surrounding architecture are on equal footing, her work cannot be called portrait photography nor referred to as city landscapes in the classical sense.
Rather, her work can be described as a symbiosis of both genres – a kind of psychological, contemporary photographic portraiture of a city determined by its people at a specific point in time.
The images are timeless and, at the same time, with the help of the camera, are precisely captured expressions of the “Zeitgeist”.
Felber’s photographs neither represent your typical or stereotypical city, nor the spectacular. Rather, they depict people living their everyday lives against the backdrop of a metropolis.
Stories are told although the individual stories are left open – without a beginning or an end, without a given order of events.
Sabine Felber gives the observer a glimpse into a moment in time, a snapshot of a moment, which by itself, is unspectacular.