The Opening Conversation

Worlds Apart opened on 16 July with a public conversation between Clemens Sagmeister and Laurin Strele, held among the photographs. The evening allowed the work to be seen collectively and discussed with guests rather than encountered as a series of isolated images.

For me, that exchange is part of the work. A documentary photograph does not end when it is made. It changes through editing, printing and context, and again when someone stands before it with their own experience.

Initiated by Clemens and Caroline Sagmeister, the exhibition is presented during the Bregenz Festival summer at Sagmeister – Der Mann in Bregenz. Across the store, large-format prints made in conflict-affected regions and remote communities turn attention to people whose lives are often reduced to headlines. The work moves between public events and private moments, looking at dignity, resilience and the persistence of ordinary life.

Photographs in Space

Staged by Simone Angerer, the installation places the work above rails and display tables rather than inside a conventional gallery. The setting is unusual, but the scale of the prints retains their directness. Faces, gestures and traces of place become visible at a physical distance that a screen cannot reproduce.

The exhibition title refers to distance, yet the sequence is built around connection. A portrait made in Afghanistan stands near photographs from Ethiopia. Elsewhere, scenes shaped by conflict and displacement appear beside images of community and family life. Together, the photographs resist the idea that a country or a person can be described by a single event.