The Freedom Within Us. East German Photography 1980-1989: Ausst. Kat. Rencontres Arles – Les Forges, 2019

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