The Agency

This agency is called OSTKREUZ. That is the name of a S-Bahn station in Berlin that resembles a wind rose, as it combines lines from all directions. When, in the fall of 1990, seven men and women got together to found the agency, they named it thus. With this they described their location, the East, which had been a country just a moment ago and to whose best photographers they had belonged. At the same time it meant to them a point from which they could start a journey anywhere.

Today OSTKREUZ is the most successful agency led by photographers in all of Germany. It has eighteen members. Almost each one of them has won prestigious national or international awards. They come from all German regions and also from other countries. The youngest of them is in his mid-twenties, the oldest in her mid-sixties. Each of them looks at the world through different eyes, is interested in different parts of it and travels in a different direction. But they all share their point of departure and return, where they frequently meet again. This is OSTKREUZ. It is an approach. It means approaching reality. There finding materials to work with. Finding the quintessence of things through ones work, imaging it and staying honest while doing so. It means developing a bearing towards reality, measuring it against it without having to sacrifice one for the other. OSTKREUZ means no more or less than being genuine.

(Marcus Jauer)

Agency photographers

OSTKREUZ , Sibylle Bergemann, Jörg Brüggemann, Espen Eichhöfer, Sibylle Fendt, Annette Hauschild, Harald Hauswald, Pepa Hristova, Tobias Kruse, Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, Dawin Meckel, Thomas Meyer, Julian Röder, Frank Schinski, Jordis Antonia Schlösser, Anne Schönharting, Linn Schröder, Heinrich Völkel, Maurice Weiss

Photographers in OSTKREUZ-archive

Mustafah Abdulaziz, Nicole Angstenberger, Arno Fischer, Albrecht Fuchs, Anne Gabriel-Jürgens, Leona Goldstein, Michael Haddenhorst, Wolfram Hahn, Brigitte Hiss, Jürgen Hohmuth, Alexander Janetzko, Andreas Kämper, Jörg Klaus, Jens Klein, Christoph Kniel, Jörg Koopmann, Andrej Krementschouk, Anja Lehmann, Hendrik Lietmann, Katharina Mouratidi, Klaus Muenzner, Andreas Muhs, Lucas Müller, Wolfgang Müller, Lars Nickel, Christian Pankratz, Julia Peschel, Sebastian Pfütze, Wolfgang Reiher, Jens Rötzsch, Thomas Sandberg, Ludwig Schirmer, Frank Schirrmeister, Georg Schönharting, Sebastian Seibel, Leo Seidel, Thomas Skroch, Jan Stradtmann, Susanne Strauch, Christian Thiel, Maria Vittoria Trovato, Jörn Vanhöfen, Constanze Vielgosz, Bodo Vitus, Felix von Muralt, Detlef Westerkamp, Jann Wilken, Rene Zieger