Born Anna Sibilla Sternfeld, Biermann discovered photography taking portraits of her daughter and son, in the early 1920s. Self-taught photographer, she soon developed her skills and became one of the leading photographers of the Neues Sehen (New Vision) movement and the New Objectivity. By the end of the same decade her work was on display in the most prestigious exhibitions in Germany and in Europe. She also exhibited at the Palais des Beaux Arts in Brussels in 1931. In 1933 she died of a liver failure. The vast majority of her work was sadly confiscated by the Nazis in 1939 at the onset of WWII.