Date/Time
Date(s) - 10/07/2019 - 10/15/2019
All Day
Location
Portland City Hall
Categories
Zeitgeist Northwest, together with the Portland Office of Community and Civic Life proudly presents “Totally East: Life in East Germany”. It features photos by the renowned photographer Harald Hauswald and texts by Stefan Wolle, Scientific Director of the GDR Museum in Berlin.
Harald Hauswald, born in 1954 in Radebeul, completed his training in photography in Dresden and moved to East Berlin in 1978. In the eighties, he walked the city’s streets and took photos of things that other photographers overlooked or regarded as uninteresting: scenes of everyday life, lonely and elderly people, couples in love, rockers, hooligans and young people in churches standing up for peace and environmental protection. “The focus is on the people” — this was one principle of socialist realism.
Harald Hauswald had his own way of giving concrete form to this principle. In East Germany, he did not receive any art award for this, but got into trouble with the authorities. Of course, Harald Hauswald also took photos of decaying buildings and queues in front of food stores. But his photos were not meant to be subversive; they were rather a declaration of love to the people in East Germany.
The exhibition was made available by the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Eastern Germany and OSTKREUZ Agentur der Fotografen. It is part of the Wunderbar Together Initiative.
The exhibition is free and open to the Public.
