Wolfgang Kleber has been a passionate photographer for more than 40 years and has devoted himself to many themes during this time, although whether the diversity of his themes is a blessing or a curse is debatable.



He has generally tried to express his ideas in series of photos. His main theme was, and is, people – he has always been fascinated by faces and their different possibilities of expression. With a few exceptions, Kleber is a photographer of ordinary, everyday people. He has often photographed musicians and dancers, but his favourite subject was women, who he documented in his countless portraits or in nude studies. He often made himself the subject too, as seen in his many self-portraits. Kleber also experimented with collages and negative montages, and strived to express himself in surreal compositions long before the advent of computers.



Other important themes have been architecture and industry, which he had to deal with in a professional capacity. He has also been repeatedly drawn to the cities of Paris, Beirut, Matera and Brooklyn. In Paris in 1968 and 1970, for example, he created portraits and documents which captured the spirit of a bygone age.



His direct, simple visual language has continued to develop over the years yet has remained youthful. Since 1968, Kleber's photographs have been shown at more than 60 individual and group exhibitions as well as art fairs. In Germany, the exhibitions were held in Berlin, Essen, Murnau, Munich and Cologne, and abroad in Rome, Paris, Beijing, Tokyo, Beirut, Los Angeles and New York. In 2013 the list of exhibition cities will include Grenoble, Essen, Moscow, Saratov and Marseille. Two of his 1968 Paris images are now in the photo collection of the Folkwang Museum in Essen.



His photo book of black and white portraits, entitled “Der Zweite Blick – At Second Glance”, with a foreword by Stefanie Grebe, was published in 2005 (Kettler Verlag, Bönen). His architectural photos have been published in two volumes of the “Architektur in Essen von 1900 bis 1960” and “Architektur in Essen von 1960 bis 2013” series.