• 20 years ago - Ute Mahler about Ibrahim Böhme
    03.05.2010 | Ute Mahler | 20 years ago

    As already mentioned several times on our blog, OSTKREUZ is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. Because of this, we will be showing single images of 1990 from our archive during the following months. Images that remember a time of change, of new freedom and also the first disappointments. A time in which everything seemed possible in Berlin, after most things stood still for previous decades. Germany, then, was in transformation. The Wall had already fallen, the reunion, however, was still to come. The GDR still existed, but the first products from the West were already coming into the country and the people could cross the border freely for the first time.

    We want to start this new category with a contribution from Ute Mahler about Ibrahim Boehme:


    In March 1990 the first free elections were held in the GDR. New parties were being founded; Ibrahim Bohme was the odds-on favorite for the post of Prime Minister - he was the leading candidate of the SPD-East (Social Democratic Party of East Germany). He was charismatic, clever, charming and with a biography of a political dissident. "Our Little King", he was affectionately called by the comrades of the SPD.


    The magazine "Stern" gave me the assignment, to photograph him during the campaign. I accompanied him over a period of 5 weeks. Not continuously, but I was present during his trip to Moscow, at campaign events in Dresden and at the party conference in Leipzig. The first photos still reveal a certain naivety in his face, later he could play his new role almost perfectly.


    It came as a big surprise that he and his party did not win the elections. Days later, it was revealed that he worked as an "informal staff" for State Security of the GDR and had betrayed his friends.

    The photo in the elevator, which I took 5 weeks after the first encounter with him, shows him at the end of his political career. Ibrahim Boehme hid from the public eye, no longer left the two-room apartment in Berlin, became ill. Two years lie between my first photo and the last one. Seven years later he died.


    Ibrahim Boehme

    Ibrahim Boehme

    Ibrahim Boehme

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  • The City - Production of the catalogue
    26.04.2010 | OSTKREUZ | The City Project

    In only two weeks' time the opening of our exhibition at C/O Berlin will take place and the exhibition catalogue, which will be published in May by Hatje Cantz, has been completed. We would like to thank Naroska Design (layout), Christiane Rothe of DruckConcept (pre-press) and Dr. Cantz'sche Druckerei (printing).

    Produktion

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  • The City - Annette Hauschild "Atlantis"
    14.04.2010 | OSTKREUZ | The City Project

    Joerg Brueggemann: Dear Annette, for your project "Atlantis", which is part of our anniversary exhibition "The City - Becoming and Decaying", you went to places called Atlantis. One, for example, was a youth hostel in Krakow, another was a club for transsexuals in New York. What were you looking for when you set out to photograph "Atlantis" and what did you find in these places?

    Atlantis
    © Annette Hauschild/OSTKREUZ

    Annette Hauschild: Instead of looking at a real place or a real city, it excited me to look for an idea of the ideal city. Our titel "The City - Becoming and Decaying" already has something exaggerated, something too large, with the apparent claim of wanting to explain a whole cycle. I thought it important that the perspectives would be very differential. I wanted to show very small and human, as well as quite abstract aspects. Then I more or less stumbled upon Atlantis by chance.
    I thought that all these places, which call themselves Atlantis, must have delt with this legend somehow and that I would find something to photograph in each of these places, which would later form a picture of the city of dreams or the longing for it as a whole. Well, and our subtitel "Becoming and Decaying", of course, fits quite well with the idea of Atlantis. Only something that does not exist anymore or has never existed can bear so much interpretation and wishful thinking.
    Atlantis is a universal and very popular myth. It is unbelievable how inflated this name is being used, once you start looking for it. I have searched for places, which do not show an all too perfect image of Atlantis, like for example all those water parks. Instead I specifically looked for places that already have something broken about them, places that are not all too perfekt. For one, so that I could find my own images and secondly, so that both sides - rise and fall of Atlantis - can still play a role in them.

    JB: In many of your images, the exact place where they were taken cannot be recognized, but a superior feeling for the place of "Atlantis" overcomes one - as if these places are held together with an invisible string. Did you photograph with this in mind, planning how the images of such different places would fit together, or did that unfold itself later during the editing?

    Atlantis
    © Annette Hauschild/OSTKREUZ

    AH: Selecting the images to fit together was much harder than I thought. I wanted to make a mix of  topographic images and portraits. I did, of course, try to create or find images that reflected a certain mood and images that would say something about paradise, dream, downfall, etc. But putting them together was not easy, because the places were so different from each other. In the end the places where the pictures were taken became quite apparent afterall and thus I left out many location shots, which were more topographic.
    It was also hard to choose whether to make one place out of the many or rather show the antagonisms and differences of many . There would be more space for larger variety in a larger story, but in a summary one has to be more precise, which is not one of my strengths. I tried a lot with the order of the images and am now able to fit in most of my favourite pictures.
    If you say it seems like it was all in one place, I am quite happy, since that is what I was trying to achieve. Especially due to the first image, where, like with the classic reportage, the place is shown and then one is able to dive into it...

    JB: I probably first heard of the myth of Atlantis in the 80s. Back then, there was a rather embarassing american TV series called "Man from Atlantis" with Patrick Duffy as the last survivor of the sunken island. Next to a lot of other bizarre phenomena, there are aliens and portals to other dimensions. Entering this world, one is sent across the whole planet in a short time. Do you think that the utopia of "Atlantis" has come a little closer in the globalised world?

    Atlantis
    © Annette Hauschild/OSTKREUZ

    AH: I think in the long run we do not need these collective desires, like Atlantis, anymore. Everyone moves in their own, sometimes globalised, community or in their own digital fantasy world. No myth has the chance to establish itself over centuries anymore, which does not bother me and I am not critizising that either. The real issue of Atlantis is the search for happiness and the ideal form of life and that this condition always bears its finiteness in itself. That is something, which always moves people. I only used Atlantis, because it describes this state so beautifully allegorical.

  • The City - Editing of individual features
    29.03.2010 | OSTKREUZ | The City Project

    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

    Editierung

    Editierung

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  • Radfahrer - Shanghai
    21.03.2010 | Christoph Wilde | "Radfahrer"

    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.
    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.

  • The City - The frist meeting with the curator
    11.03.2010 | OSTKREUZ | The City Project

    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.


    Lehnitz
    © Andrej Krementschouk/OSTKREUZ
    Lehnitz
    © Andrej Krementschouk/OSTKREUZ

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  • The Intern - Stories
    05.03.2010 | OSTKREUZ | Inside 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?

    ostkreuz office
    © 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.

  • The New York Times Style Magazine Blog
    01.03.2010 | OSTKREUZ | Interviews

    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.

    The New York Times Style Magazine Blog

    screenshot The New York Times Style Magazine Blog