Only six weeks until the exhibition opening at c/o Berlin: "The City - Becoming and Decaying".
After presenting our works to our curator Felix Hoffmann of c/o Berlin for the first time, we began editing the individual features in November. This process was continued during the following three months until the selection was finalized.
All images © Dawin Meckel/OSTKREUZ
Christoph Wilde: Hello Harald, after a longer break here is our new »Radfahrer« entry. At the moment we are busy preparing our next OSTKREUZ exhibition and book project »The City – Of becoming and decaying«. I have therefore chosen for today's interview one of the pictures you took for this project in Shanghai. 
© Harald Hauswald/OSTKREUZ
What impressions did you bring back home?
Harald Hauswald: Only good ones. The people are open-minded and you can take pictures without any problems. The society seems surprisingly liberal, it happens that you see someone walking around in pyjamas.
CW: Although the GDR stopped existing 20 years ago, please allow me this question: Were you able to discover similarities to GDR socialism during your short stay in Shanghai?
HH: No, as a tourist I didn't notice anything like that, perhaps if there had been an anniversary or a big celebration during my stay.
CW: How did the tittle »Without a visa to Shanghai« for your series come up? It sounds like a quote from GDR times.
HH: I read it on a transparent at a demonstration on 4 September 1989 and liked it.
CW: Thank you Harald.
As already anounced, we'd like to present to you several phases of our new book and exhibition project "The City - Becoming and Decaying".
Yet before we dive into the entire state of affairs, here a small view into a meeting in the summer of 2009. Motive of the meeting was to show our curator, Felix Hoffmann of C/O Berlin, a first insight into the features we had produced for the "City" project until that point in time.
© Andrej Krementschouk/OSTKREUZ
© Andrej Krementschouk/OSTKREUZ
Now for the second one
These last weeks a lot has happened at OSTKREUZ and although many hours were merely filled with creating dates for photographs in the databank, the intern is still excited to be here! Why? Because the few lines you read here are only a fraction of all that really happens!
Recently Julian Roeder took me to yet another one of his shootings for "retrotrend". In the extremely narrow kitchen, Julian Roeder at times leaning over, then again squeezed under the sink, the portrayed woman in front of a gaudy blue wall with drawn "insanely awesome stuff" tape pointed at the photographer, great picture. Me with flash in hand in front of gaudy blue wall, no picture - but took a lot from it. Especially knowing the efforts put into a picture: Besides the technical problems such as light, background, props, space, etc, but what the reader, or better the observer often isn't aware of are exertions like running through the city, waiting for the subway, pasting fake-ticket sellers, finding the right address, having a quick smoke, thinking of a sensible composition, which the editor will also like... The photographer, however, sitting here, reviewing his images, talking with his colleagues, receiving his pay check for last month, will quite frequently ask himself - and this is a question I, too, ask myself quite often - will this pay the rent?
© David Vogt
Annette Hauschild photographed Moazzam Begg for Amnesty International. Mr. Begg had, innocently and without accusation, been held and tortured at the U.S. detention camps in Kandahar and Bagram (Afghanistan), as well as in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. I was allowed to come along and learned a lot from Mrs. Speidel the Campaign and Communication Representative, who accompanied him, about Amnesty International.
Much is going on here at the agency, a lot of photographers, a lot of pictures, "The City", the OSTREUZ exhibition and book project, is going at full speed. For me it is an exciting time, to be here while all this is going on, to see what the photographers bring from their overseas trips, the pictures, the stories, the accidents and coincidences, broken cameras... but also minds that still wander in other places of the world, while they themselves already have to sit here and evaluate and make selections of their photographs, make proofs, move data and at last, sitting at the round table, reconnect with each other, but also themselves, through conversations and discussions.
Our photographer Ute Mahler appears with an interview on the New York Times Style Magazine Blog. She was asked about her fashion pictures, which she took in the former GDR. You can find the interview here.
screenshot The New York Times Style Magazine Blog
