The Shuttered Society. “Art Photography in the GDR: 1949-1989”

How did free art photography express itself under the authoritarian conditions prevailing in the former East Germany (GDR)? And how did it change over the decades?
The first comprehensive exhibition on art photography in the GDR is the result of extensive research. The catalogue accompanying the exhibition features a total of 33 selected authors who show how, despite numerous obstacles, free art photography did exist and critically reflected social conditions.
The selected positions convey the most important threads of development in art photography in the GDR: montage and experimentation, documentary perspective and social reportage and the work of young newcomers in the 1980s.