19-22 MARCH 2026
SUMMA. Hans Georg Berger, an exhibition by MUSEC at MIA Photo Fair BNP Paribas, Milano
From 19 to 22 March 2026, on the occasion of the MIA Photo Fair BNP Paribas, MUSEC presents Summa, an exhibition of black and white works by German photographer Hans Georg Berger (born 1951). The project brings together 35 photographs, most of which have never been seen before, carefully selected from the artist’s archives. These long-preserved and now rediscovered shots form a body of work of particular aesthetic value and bear witness to the consistency and depth of Berger’s research over a period of more than forty years. The exhibition, curated by Francesco Sabrina Camporini e Paolo Campione, is conceived as a thematic and circular journey develops from nature to human experience, from the body to architecture, to the aesthetic and intellectual dimension, before returning to the starting point. The selection of works, most of which are unpublished, stems from an aesthetic consideration: it includes his first Irish shots, photographs of Elba (in particular at the Hermitage of St. Catherine), life in Munich, images of Asia and his trip to Egypt with Hervé Guibert.
Hans Georg Berger was born in Trier (Germany) in 1951. After studying philosophy of religion, in the early 1970s he was an actor, screenwriter, and director for the Rote Rübe theater group. From 1977 to 1983, he was director of the Internationales Festival des Freien Theaters in Munich and co-founder of the Münchener Biennale. In the late 1970s, he began restoring the Hermitage of Saint Catherine on the Island of Elba, transforming the ancient Franciscan convent into an international art center and creating a botanical garden dedicated to the wild flora of the Tuscan Archipelago. Alongside his experience on Elba, Berger launched a series of long-term photographic projects in the 1980s, focusing primarily on the cultural dimension of ritual and meditation as a source of spiritual research. The main focus of his research and training activities was Laos, Thailand, and Iran, countries where he stayed on several occasions and for long periods, weaving an extensive network of relationships that also facilitated the implementation of important international cooperation projects.
In the city of Luang Prabang, the ancient capital of the Kingdom of Lan Xang and, until 1975, the residence of the king of Laos, Berger founded the Buddhist Photography Archive in the late 1990s with the aim of preserving and promoting a unique heritage of over 35,000 images taken by monks from the birth of photography to the end of the 20th century.
