• Eviction of Mainzer St.

    Christoph Wilde: Hello Harald, this week searching the archive I've chosen a photo you took when Mainzer Strasse in Berlin-Friedrichshain was cleared in November 1990. There is a policeman lying on the floor. What happened to him?
    Räumung der Mainzer Str.

    © Harald Hauswald/OSTKREUZ
    Harald Hauswald: A half brick hit him on his chin and he fell over like a board. If I remember rightly, 167 policemen were hurt but just one squatter, who while standing on the roof was hit by a tear gas grenade between his legs, ouch!

    C.W.: Were you afraid that something could happen to you, too?  

    H.H.: Of course, I was. While photographing, I looked over the camera and not through the view-finder, the wide-angle objective made you perceive the stones too late. There were stones lying about in a distance of ten centimetres.
    It was civil war.

    C.W.: Could you understand the squatters' fury or did you think they overreacted?

    H.H.: I don't know whether it was fury but I think the reaction of the police didn't have much sense. There wasn't even one squatter on the street, the stones were being thrown out of the windows and down from the roofs and the police was running around in a very disorganized way. When the house was finally cleared, they found a 20 litre Molotov cocktail on the roof.

    C.W.: Thanks, Harald.

  • What Harald wanted to become

    Christoph Wilde: Hello Harald. This week I took a picture for our interview from the database which shows a person with a camera. Please tell us briefly how you came to be a photographer.

    Neptunbrunnen

    © Harald Hauswald/OSTKREUZ

    Harald Hauswald: My father was a freelance master photographer. One day he presented me with a signed apprenticeship contract and so in 1970 I started an apprenticeship as a photographer. When after eighteen months I still hadn't touched a camera, I quit and started working as a construction worker. I had several different jobs afterwards, I was, for example, working as roadie for some time, until after serving in the army I started to work in the photographic service of the Technical University of Dresden where I took a degree as a photographer in 1976.

    CW: What job did you originally want to work in, what were your career aspirations?

    HH: Cook.

    CW: Are you now,  in retrospect, still happy with your decision to become a photographer?

    HH: It's a very exciting and interesting job, you get to know many people and sometimes also parts of the world.

    CW: Thank you Harald.

  • Change

    Anne Schoenharting has recently switched to digital photography. Thomas Meyer has spoken with her about it.

    Thomas Meyer: Hello Anne, what made you change from analogue medium-format to 35mm digital? Why did you refuse to take that step for so long and what made you do it now?

    Anne Schönharting: Until recently I have strictly refused to even look at a digital camera, simply out of loyalty to my beloved Zenza Bronica medium format. One day I realized that I cannot ignore the technical development if I want to continue to work as a photographer. I was encouraged by an interview with Annie Leibovitz I came across, in which she claimed that digital technology was an extension of human vision. I am actually surprised that I was able to continue working for editorial magazines using only analogue cameras for so long.  
    When I eventually began testing digital medium format cameras, to be honest, none of them convinced me. I thought they were too heavy, too slow, the autofocus was too vague and they were too expensive. They can already be used very well for portraits but they are not really suitable for reportages. Eventually a friend gave me her Canon 5d Mark II and said that I should at least try it. At the end of the afternoon there was no doubt: There is a new passion in my life whose name is Mr. Canon.
    Kind auf dem Balkon

    © Anne Schönharting/OSTKREUZ

    read on ...

  • Jörg Brüggemann

    Espen Eichhöfer: In your thesis "Same Same But Different" you describe backpacking in Southeast Asia. Can you explain how you came to the topic and how you implement it?

    Jörg Brüggemann: I got the idea when I travelled myself as a backpacker through South America a couple of years ago. Also here the alternative travel guide "Lonely Planet" defines the itineraries of backpackers. I heard from other travellers that this phenomenon in Southeast Asia will be much bigger, then I went to India for the first time. I went there for a second time, and also to Thailand and Laos - always as a backpacker packed with a “Lonely Planet”. If you open it on the second double page you find a map of the country with the "hot spots" - the specific recommendations. Then I went there and in a total I was on the road for three months.

    One of the main thoughts, which I had while photographing, was that this travelling has nothing to do with alternative or individual tourism any more, but is a new type of package holidays. By now millions of young people from the Western world travel each year in the second or third world countries, for adventure, for party, for taking drugs, falling in love, hanging out at the beach or trekking into the mountains. It does not matter whether you are in the Andes or the Himalayas, in the Caribbean or the Gulf of Thailand. Everywhere there are pizza and falafel, everywhere smoking weed, everywhere hearing Bob Marley... Same Same But Different.

    Kamel in der Wüste

    © Jörg Brüggemann/OSTKREUZ

    read on ...

  • Subway route A

    C: Hello Harald. This week I have the following picture I stumbled on in our archive. It shows three men in the underground line A. You are very close to the people, did you ask them first whether you may shoot them?

    U-Bahn Linie A

    © Harald Hauswald/OSTKREUZ

    H: I came from a party and had drunk a bit, otherwise I probably would not had the heart. I did not ask, I shot seven times; one of the pictures is sharp.

    C: Did you ever get into trouble with people you have photographed without their consent?

    H: Not really.

    C: Do you have a certain pattern when you walk through the streets and photograph?

    H: Exploring, being curious and having a feeling for situations - possibly even beginning to take pictures before the actual moment comes. Then the people see what you want, and either it gets a picture or not. Overall, I have made yet more pictures than there were situations with no picture.

    C: Thank you Harald.

  • Espen Eichhöfer - Bastøy

    Bastøy is an island situated in the south of the Norwegian capital Oslo where 115 prisoners live and work in farming. In their free time inmates have access to horseback riding, fishing and cross-country skiing. Espen Eichhöfer spent a couple of days there in December 2008 working on a reportage.

    Anne Schoenharting: Is the entire island is a prison?

    Espen Eichhoefer: Except for a small piece of beach on the east side of Bastøy, the entire island is the prison. This beach is reserved for the visitors from the mainland. There is a minimal barrier, a fence, the only one you find on the whole island.

    Steg auf Bastøy

    © Espen Eichhöfer/OSTKREUZ

    read on ...

  • OSTZEIT - Press review

    OSTZEIT Cover


    Attracting 15 000 visitors, OSTZEIT – Stories from a vanished country, which ended a month ago, has been the most successful exhibition the Haus der Kulturen der Welt has ever hosted: Time to take a look back in the media.

    PRINT / ONLINE

    Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung

    FAZ

    taz - die tageszeitung 

    Spiegel

    Tagesspiegel

    Berliner Zeitung

    dpa

    TIP

    art

    Photography now

    rbb Kulturradio

    Hessischer Rundfunk

    Nordkurier

    Südkurier


    AUDIO

    Deutschlandradio Kultur
     

    Bayerischer Rundfunk 


    VIDEO 

    ARD_Tagesthemen 

    Deutsche Welle 

    3sat

    Tagesspiegel  

    tvBerlin

  • Dawin Meckel - Detroit

    Interview with Dawin Meckel about his photo project on Detroit.
    Espen Eichhöfer: Detroit, a city among those which have been affected most by the economic crisis. Why did you choose to do a photo project in this city? 


    Dawin Meckel: I have been interested in the widely spread urban phenomenon of shrinking cities and suburbanisation, which means that large parts of the population leave or have already left the city centre to move to the outskirts and the centre decays. Detroit is a place where this demographic development is very visual.

    Häuserreihe in Detroit

    © Dawin Meckel/OSTKREUZ

    read on ...