Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall what do we know about East-German photography?
Resulting from several years of research led by Sonia Voss in Berlin and several other cities
of former G.D.R. this publication presents the work of 16 photographers still rarely shown
outside of their country that have developed their work during the decade preceding the fall
of the Wall. The economy was crumbling the country was in free fall all that was left was
to wait for its unavoidable collapse. Boredom desire for someplace else impatience -
sometimes melancholic sometimes enraged - were created by this state of repression
uniformisation and the shortage experienced by youth of this time. The existential and artistic
strategies are as diverse as the artists that have been through this period: confrontation of
social taboos withdrawal and introspection evasion through dreams self reinvention through
dressing up and dramatisation. The body is often at the center of their experimentations
drawing from hybridization and performative art to express their thirst for subversion and
speed or to observe faces and bodies in order to ward off their falling apart. In this book
women have an important place reflecting the specificity of their social status in East
Germany.
