Wolfgang Sievers
Born in Germany, Wolfgang Sievers (1913-2007) arrived in Australia in 1939 and set about revolutionising industrial and commercial photography in this country. Influenced by the Bauhaus movement in Germany, his photos were usually highly stylised, with strong compositions, high contrast and often choreographed subjects.
Sievers’ most famous photo, Gears For The Mining Industry, which was shot at the Vickers Ruwalt factory in Melbourne in 1967, has been reproduced in many books and magazine articles, as well as featuring on an Australian stamp in 1991, as part of a series to celebrate 150 years of photography.
From the mid-1990s to 2003, the National Library of Australia in Canberra made a number of purchases of Wolfgang’s photos, eventually obtaining his complete catalogue totalling more than 70,000 images. In 2003, Wolfgang bequeathed all his records and personal memorabilia to the library, which were transferred in 2008 after his death. The Wolfgang Sievers Photographic Archive, at more than 19,000 prints and 51,700 negatives and transparencies, is the largest individual photographic collection held by the library.
Wolfgang‘s photographs also feature in many Australian galleries, including the Australian National Gallery, the National Gallery of Victoria, Art Gallery of NSW and a number of regional galleries and private collections. Today, he is one of Australia’s most sought-after photographers, but his prints do not come up for sale very often.
In the late 1960s, Wolfgang expanded his repertoire to include colour photography. From the time of its opening in 1970, Bond Colour Laboratories in Richmond was his laboratory of choice for this colour work, and later for printing his black-and-white exhibition prints. So commenced a deep and lasting professional and personal relationship with Lothar Huber and the Bond team. Before his death in 2007, Wolfgang gifted a number of framed and unframed photos and proofs to Lothar. In 2010, to celebrate its 40th anniversary, Bond Colour produced a number of large, mounted prints for a retrospective exhibition of Wolfgang’s work.
Focal Point Gallery is honoured to have been selected to exhibit and sell Lothar Huber’s collection of photos, including most of those gifted to him by Wolfgang Sievers (some being retained by Lothar’s family). Please read the descriptions carefully, and view the accompanying photographs of the actual items.
Lothar’s family has ties with McDonalds family restaurants, so they decided to share some of the good from the sale of the photographs. They are donating 10% of all sales to Ronald McDonald House Charities Vic/Tas, which gives seriously ill children the best gift of all: their families.