Biography mmr leipzig germany pictures

In the course of the project, which is supported by the Federal Foundation for the Reappraisal of the SED Dictatorship, dozens of interviews were conducted and hundreds of albums examined. In this article the photography historian Friedrich Tietjen sketches some of the issues and results of the project. The paradox that Frau G. In many other photo collections the dramatic changes have left ever fewer traces, although at the time the events were so close, present and far-reaching.

Yet the production of images for private use was evidently oriented on other motifs.

Biography mmr leipzig germany pictures: Biograph mMR represents an excellent device

Instead of following the political and public events, private photographs generally stayed within the familiar, domestic realm; instead of focusing on the disruptions that even affected individual biographies, they stress the continuities; instead of showing a life that is constantly changing on an almost daily basis, they present the most pleasant images of this everyday life, the vacations, the parties, the children.

The photography in the private East German albums in the years between and thus offers a different perspective on the end of the GDR and the transition of the country into a united Federal Republic than we find in the photojournalistic event photography that has long since illustrated the history books. The private photography represents these two decades not as much as an abrupt turnover than as a transition that was noticeable long before and could be felt far into the s.

We found clues to this rather gradual change not only in what the photographic images themselves show, but also in the actual practice of photographing in a more general sense. A former animal keeper at the GDR state circus told us how he was able to buy a compact camera during a tour through Japan in the mids which had a number of features that no camera that was produced in the GDR had to offer.

Several people we spoke with explained why music magazines from West Germany were photographed page by page and the copies secretly passed around or sold in the schools and at local black markets, and in some cases there was an active exchange of pictures of relatives between East and West Germany.