News

On January 2, 2026, the new edition of Ost-Berlin was delivered as one of the first books released in the new year. It is the 15th printing of the 7th edition of the volume jointly curated by Harald Hauswald and the writer Lutz Rathenow. For more than 20 years, the book has been a perennial bestseller of Jaron Verlag, repeatedly succeeding in generating new resonances in the present day.

In the autumn, Harald Hauswald presented two successful exhibitions in Chile and the United States. His solo exhibition featuring 87 photographs from the book—taken in East Berlin in the late 1980s and smuggled from East Berlin to Texas, USA—is still on view until the end of January at the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus in the German Bundestag.

On Monday, January 26 at 6:00 pm, Brotfabrik Berlin will screen the documentary film “Zärtlich kreist die Faust”, followed by an introduction and a discussion. The film is a diary-style documentary from February 1990 about the writer Lutz Rathenow, first broadcast by ARD at the time, and includes a striking scene showing a conversation between Harald Hauswald and Lutz Rathenow. After the screening, Lutz Rathenow will give a reading.

Date: January 26, 2026, 6:00 pm

Venue: Brotfabrik Berlin

Further information: brotfabrik-berlin.de/veranstaltung/und-zaertlich-kreist-die-faust-filmtagebuch-von-lutz-rathenow-schriftsteller-ostberlin/

From the end of November until the beginning of next year, the Freelens Gallery in Hamburg will be showing the series “Monalises of the Suburbs,” the first joint project by the two photographers, which was created between 2008 and 2010, in the exhibition “Ute and Werner Mahler x Freelens Young Professionals” (provisional working title).  

In the suburbs of Reykjavik, Liverpool, Minsk, Berlin, and Florence, the two young women encounter women who have outgrown childhood and are searching for themselves and their place in the world. In front of streets and squares in their everyday surroundings, the women sit on a chair with a headrest to have their portraits taken. They are focused on themselves, and a deep and enigmatic beauty becomes visible in their faces. The backdrop of the periphery and the seemingly interchangeable backgrounds reinforce the individuality and power of those portrayed.

Opening: November 27, 2025  

Duration: November 28, 2025, to January 29, 2026

Further details

Annette Hauschild and Ute Mahler are each represented with several series in the group exhibition “Das Weite suchen. Fotografien der späten DDR und frühen 1990er Jahre” (Seeking the Wide Open Spaces: Photographs of the Late GDR and Early 1990s) at the Brandenburg Museum in Potsdam. The exhibition presents images from a decade of transformation in East Germany that is now remembered and discussed controversially. The photographs by the twelve selected photographers offer individual perspectives on everyday life, protest, and change during those years and take an intimate, critical, or even unsettling look at this decade, which continues to have an impact today.  

In addition to Annette Hauschild and Ute Mahler, Tina Bara, Christiane Eisler, Christian Fenger, Anselm Graubner, Jürgen Matschie, Peter Oehlmann, Ludwig Rauch, Joachim Richau, Merit Schambach (Pietzker), and Barbara Wolff are also represented in the exhibition. “Das Weite suchen” is an exhibition by the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History Research Potsdam (ZZF) and was curated by Dr. Isabel Enzenbach and Dr. Anja Tack.

Date: November 27, 2025, 7 p.m.

Duration: November 28, 2025, to March 22, 2026 

Location: Brandenburg Museum, Potsdam

Further details

Photo: Annette Hauschild, from the series Wesendahl, a village in Brandenburg, 1992 

The magazine Solomiya, co-founded by Sebastian Wells after Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, will publish its fifth issue in November 2025 with SHIFT BOOKS and a design by the Skrollan collective. In addition to Sebastian Wells from Berlin, the editorial team includes Ivanna Kozachenko, Andrii Ushytskyi, and Vsevolod Kazarin from Kyiv. 

With voices from Yemen, Bosnia, Ukraine, Georgia, and Germany, among others, Solomiya No. 5 — After Now" turns its gaze to the present—to the conditions that shape the paths the future could follow. What does it mean to talk about peace when peace feels like a manipulative projection imposed by distant observers? What does it mean to talk about an inclusive future when our imagination itself is limited by moral superiority and sanctioned narratives? How can we dream of days to come when we might say we were wrong?

Until October 31, the magazine can be ordered from SHIFT BOOKS at a discounted pre-sale price of €18; after that, it will cost €22.

The magazine launch will take place at KVOST — Kunstverein Ost . 

Date: November 27, 2025, 7 p.m. 

Location: KVOST — Kunstverein Ost, Berlin

Further details

DASA in Dortmund, Germany's largest exhibition on the world of work, is showing Frank Schinski's series “Aiming High,” for which he accompanied various application processes in different European countries.

Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, capitalism has been the dominant economic model in Europe. Having a job promises individuals security, freedom, and social status. Frank Schinski has repeatedly explored the world of work and has produced several photographic works on the subject. For “Aiming High,” he observed participants at job fairs, job interviews, castings, and assessment centers as they entered into a seemingly fixed choreography of imaginary expectations. The agreed locations and procedures appear standardized, normalized, and as uniform as the applicants, who are to be tested, assessed, evaluated according to economic criteria, and assigned. The interactions between the world of work and the individual are the focus of this work by Frank Schinski. 

Date: November 20, 2025, 6 p.m.

Duration: November 21, 2025, to March 31, 2026  

Location: DASA, Dortmund

Further details 

Parallel to the presentation of works by Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler at the Stadtmuseum, the Hesse Cabinet in Tübingen will show an exhibition of color photographs by Ute Mahler from her 2002 series “Auf den Spuren von Hermann Hesse” (In the Footsteps of Hermann Hesse). For her series, she followed in the footsteps of the well-traveled writer and created free, associative images related to the works of Hermann Hesse and the places where he lived and worked. 

The Hesse Cabinet is housed in part of the rooms of the Heckenhauer antiquarian bookshop, where Hesse began his apprenticeship as a bookseller in 1895 and later founded the literary circle “le petit cénacle.” 

Duration: November 20, 2025, to January 11, 2026 

Location: Hesse Cabinet, Tübingen  

Further details

The Tübingen City Museum is also showing the exhibition “Über Dörfer und Städte” (About Villages and Towns) with selected photographs by Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler from the projects “Ein Dorf” (A Village) and “Kleinstadt” (Small Town). 

Small town—an empty square, hardly anyone around, and if so, then only old people or young people, no sights, empty downtown shops, slow decay, and, in the best case, the charm of the morbid—you only happen to pass by here and wonder: Who is here when I'm not, and why? After “Monalises of the Suburbs” (until 2011), “Where the World Ended” (until 2012), and “Strange Days” (until 2014), Ute and Werner Mahler chose to explore small towns as their fourth joint project. From 2015 to 2018, they traveled through Germany with a small car, a large camera, and a supply of black-and-white film, searching for images that document the mood, the attitude toward life, and the spirit of these places. 

As part of the exhibition opening, there will be an artist talk with Reinhard Johler, Professor of Empirical Art Studies at Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen. 

Opening: November 20, 2025, 5 p.m., starting at 6 p.m., Reinhard Johler in conversation with the Mahlers

Duration: November 21, 2025, to January 11, 2026  

Location: Tübingen City Museum

Further details

Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler are guests at the University of Tübingen as part of the 38th Tübingen Poetry Lectureship, which this year is held by Jenny Erpenbeck and Peter Wawerzinek. The writer Jenny Erpenbeck will talk to Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler about their joint work on the project “Ein Dorf” (A Village). She is the author of the text “An der Schwelle der Zeiten” (On the Threshold of Time), which appears in the book “Ein Dorf. 1950–2022” (A Village. 1950–2022) by Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, and Ludwig Schirmer, Hartmann Books. 

“A Village 1950–2022” is a long-term project by the three photographers. It focuses on the Thuringian village of Berka, yet reaches far beyond its borders. In the 1950s, Ludwig Schirmer, Ute Mahler's father, was a master miller in Berka. As a self-taught photographer, he began documenting everyday life, festivals, and his own life. Without knowing about his father-in-law's pictures, Ute's husband Werner Mahler decided in 1977 to photograph his thesis in Berka. A good 20 years later, in 1998, Stern magazine asked him for an update, which was never published. In 2021/22, Ute Mahler took photographs in Berka. As a family legacy, the result was a personal work about her home village.  

Date: November 18, 2025, 7 p.m.

Location: University of Tübingen, Old Auditorium

Further details

The German House at New York University is presenting an exhibition by Harald Hauswald in the USA for the first time. The show “Harald Hauswald: Life in East Germany” was curated by New York-based German photographer Martin Schoeller. In the late 1970s and 1980s, Harald Hauswald captured everyday life in the GDR with empathy, humor, and precision. The exhibition at the German House offers an unadulterated view of life in East Germany before the fall of the Berlin Wall and contrasts an often ironic view of public space with an intimate insight into the private and inner world of GDR citizens. As a self-proclaimed “chronicler of the East,” Hauswald constantly observed the system, which in turn also monitored him. From 1978 until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Hauswald was under constant surveillance by the Stasi. On the evening of the exhibition opening, there will be an artist talk between Harald Hauswald and Martin Schoeller.  

Date: November 13, 2025, 6 p.m., in the presence of the photographer

Duration: November 14, 2025, to January 16, 2026

Location: German House at NYU, New York

Further details

The LOOCK Gallery is also presenting Werner Mahler's well-known long-term project “Die Abiturienten” (The High School Graduates) at Paris Photo.

Werner Mahler began photographing for this project in 1977 and continues to work on it today. In 1977, he photographed the graduates of a high school in Oranienburg who were facing their future after graduating from high school. In the years that followed, Werner Mahler photographed each of them at regular intervals, tracing the lifelines that share this common starting point. Over time, quite a few have disappeared from the ranks: nine of the former classmates remain and have repeatedly opened their doors to the photographer to pose for his camera in their changing life situations. 

In this long-term project, the empty spaces as well as the images tell of what life brings, both big and small: of hope, success, failure, or death, and in this generation, also of the collapse of a value system. 

Duration: November 13 to November 16, 2025 

Location: Paris Photo, LOOCK Gallery booth, A19

Further details

To mark Sibylle Bergemann's solo exhibition at the Fondation Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris , Kerber Verlag is publishing a book of the same name, Das Denkmal, edited by Frieda von Wild & Lily von Wild (Estate Bergemann) and independent curator Sonia Voss. 

The publication brings together for the first time Sibylle Bergemann's complete photographic series on the creation of the Marx-Engels Monument, which was erected in 1986 on the initiative of the GDR government not far from Berlin's Alexanderplatz. It presents numerous previously unpublished photographs and offers a new perspective on one of the photographer's most important bodies of work. Bergemann's long-term documentation, created between 1975 and 1986, is not only presented as an impressive photographic narrative, but also contextualized historically, socio-politically, and in terms of photographic theory through accompanying essays by Christian Joschke, Heiner Müller, Steffen Siegel, Sonia Voss, Frieda von Wild, and Lily von Wild. During Paris Photo, there will be a book launch at the LOOCK Gallery  booth in the presence of the editors; the gallery will also present works from Sibylle Bergemann's monument series.  

Book launch: November 13, 2025, 3 p.m. 

Presentation duration: November 13 to November 16, 2025

Location: Paris Photo, LOOCK Gallery booth, A19 

Further details

Harald Hauswald will be participating in a panel discussion at Fotografiska during the symposium “Cultural Resistance in the GDR,” which is dedicated to the book launch of “UR Tacheles” by Rafael Insunza, musician and co-founder of the legendary Tacheles art house. The book, which features numerous photographs by Harald Hauswald, forms the starting point for an examination of forms of artistic resistance in the GDR. The program will be complemented by a screening of the documentary film “Fragments of Yesterday” (2025) by Jan Henselder about Leo Kondeyne, who played a key role in the initial occupation and later founding of the Tacheles cultural center. Afterwards, Rafael Insunza, Michaela van den Driesch (managing director of the Kunstforum Biennale Lausitz), and Harald Hauswald will discuss the role of art, music, and photography as expressions of social opposition and cultural self-assertion in a panel discussion. A project with and supported by the German Embassy in Chile, the Goethe-Institut Chile, the Aninat Gallery, Santiago de Chile, the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Chile, the OSTKREUZ agency, and the production company El Capitan, Chile.

Date: November 7, 2025, 7 p.m., doors open at 6:30 p.m.

Location: Fotografiska, Berlin

Tickets

Further details

Sibylle Fendt presents her new book, published by Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg, at Haus#1 in Kreuzberg, curated by Ingo Taubhorn. In it, Sibylle Fendt focuses on people who are spending the last phase of their lives at home surrounded by family and friends. Her intimate photographs show how familiar surroundings can be an important anchor during the time of farewell, providing comfort and support despite the pain. Through the photographs, supplemented by quotes from those depicted, Sibylle Fendt makes it clear how this time also has a special value and finds a particularly touching and appreciative visual language for the difficult subject of dying. Kehrer Verlag will present the book during Paris Photo at the publisher's booth (K 18) and will host a book signing with Sibylle Fendt on November 14 at 6 p.m. There will be several events at the exhibition in Haus#1 in Berlin at which the photographer will be present.

Opening: November 7, 2025, 7 p.m.

Artist Talk: November 8, 2025, 4 p.m. (Sibylle Fendt in conversation with curator Ingo Taubhorn)

Lecture: November 24, 2025, 6 p.m. (Dr. Dirk Pörschmann, director of the Museum für Sepulkralkultur, Kassel, and Dr. Thomas Schindler, palliative care physician, Berlin)

Closing event: November 30, 2025, 4 p.m. 

Duration: November 8 to November 30, 2025

Location: Haus#1, Waterloo Ufer o. Nr., open Friday to Sunday, 2 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Further details

As part of the Aachen City Region Photography Festival, Johanna-Maria Fritz's work “Daughters of Magic“ is on display in a solo exhibition at the Logoi Institute for Philosophy and Discourse, curated by Dieter Jacobs (ARTCO Gallery, Aachen).

For “Daughters of Magic“, Fritz spent over a year and a half accompanying Mihaela Minca, Romania's most powerful witch. The profession of witchcraft has a long tradition in Minca's family; her mother and grandmother also practised it. Today, Minca runs a thriving business together with her daughters and daughter-in-law – they offer everything from love spells to curses and receive enquiries from all over the world via the internet. However, magic and predicting the future are not just these women's profession. They are not merely a business, not a performance. Magic and mysticism are a natural part of life in this Roma family and their closely knit community. The craft of witchcraft is also an expression of female strength within a male-dominated everyday culture.

Exhibition dates: until 21 September 2025

Venue: Logoi-Institut für Philosophie und Diskurs, Aachen

Click here for details

As part of the Sibiu Contemporary Art Festival, the Museum of Contemporary Art at the Brukenthal National Museum is presenting a comprehensive retrospective entitled “Sibylle Bergemann. Photographs“, which showcases the entire oeuvre of the Berlin-based photographer. 

Sibylle Bergemann worked in series, but also documented themes over a longer period of time. Fashion and portrait photography – created for “Sibylle“ or “Geo“ – form a focal point in Sibylle Bergemann's work. Bergemann began focusing on situational and scenic images in Berlin in the late 1960s. Later, she moved on to New York, Paris, Tokyo and São Paulo. For many years, she worked with Polaroids and, until 1990, mainly in black and white. She is one of the few photographers who use colour not as an illustrative element, but as a constitutive one. 

An exhibition in cooperation with the German Cultural Centre Sibiu (Centrul Cultural German Sibiu) and the Institute for Foreign Cultural Relations (ifa), curated by Frieda von Wild (Estate Bergemann) and Ursula Zeller (ifa).

Exhibition dates: September 7 to October 6, 2025

Venue: Muzeul Național Brukenthal, Piața Mare 4, 5550163 Sibiu

Click here for details

Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler will participate in the symposium of the 3rd Lausitz Photo Days. For one week, they will be guests in Lieberose together with other photographers from Lusatia and Berlin, where they will explore the region, the landscape, the people and social upheavals through photography and trace the changes in Lusatia. At the same time, selected works by all photographers will be on display at the “Darre“, the festival venue. 

Herbert Schirmer and Uwe Warnke, the curators of the festival, have selected three other renowned photographers to participate in the “Symposium“ of the Lusatian Photo Days alongside Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler, who in turn have each invited a younger photographer to participate in order to promote young photographic talent. This selection process resulted in the following pairs of photographers: Ute Mahler & Meret Eberl; Werner Mahler & Antine Karla Yzer; Frank Höhler & Sven Gatter; Hans-Christian Schink & Ludwig Spaude; Claus Bach & Andreas Beetz. 

Ulrike Kremeier, director of the Brandenburg State Museum of Modern Art in Cottbus, will give a lecture on photography in the GDR in the 1980s on 10 September 2025 at 7:30 p.m., which is open to the public.

Exhibition dates: 7 to September 14 2025

Venue: Lieberose, Lausitz

Click here for details 

The Bohai Gallery in Hanover is currently showing Frank Schinski's solo exhibition “Aiming High“. For the photographic essay of the same name, which was created between 2017 and 2020, Schinski accompanied various application processes in different European countries. At job fairs, interviews, castings and assessment centres, he observed the participants as they entered into a seemingly fixed choreography of imaginary expectations. The agreed locations and procedures appear standardised, normalised and as uniform as the applicants themselves, who are to be tested, assessed, evaluated according to economic criteria and assigned. Frank Schinski is particularly interested in the interactions between the world of work and the individual. 

As part of the artist talk at the end of the exhibition, Frank Schinski will talk about his long-standing photographic exploration of the theme of the world of work, on which he has produced several photographic works. 

Artist talk: September 14 2025, 4:00 P.M.

Exhibition dates: until September 14 2025

Venue: Galerie Bohai, Hanover

Click here for details

Annette Hauschild's photographs are part of the screening “Between Concrete and Boudoir,“ initiated by Sch.quadrat and curated by Karla Schieferstein and Laura Schnitzer. On display are works by female photographers from several generations who illuminate scenes from Berlin's scene and club culture from a female perspective. 

In addition to Annette Hauschild, Ann Christin Jansson, Lucia Jost, Marina Monaco, Frieda von Wild and Emily Dodd Noble are also participating. 

The screening is part of the Rencontres d'Arles' “Best of Nuit de l'Année“ programme and takes place as part of “Night of Photography 2025“, organised by the Museum of Warsaw.

Exhibition dates: September 12, 2025

Venue: Sto Pociech Foundation, 20/24 A Dreta St, Warsaw

“Best of Nuit de l'Année“ can also be seen until 5 October 2025 at the Rencontres d'Arles in the Ancien Collège Mistral.

Click here for details

On the occasion of the exhibition “Die TEXAS BOX“ at the Berlin Wall Memorial of the German Bundestag, Harald Hauswald and Lutz Rathenow look back on life in a different era in a panel discussion moderated by Kristina Volke, head of the German Bundestag's art collection. In 1987, on the occasion of Berlin's 750th anniversary, Hauswald and Rathenow jointly published the book “Ost-Berlin. Die andere Seite der Stadt“ (East Berlin: The Other Side of the City) with photographs and texts, published by Piper-Verlag Munich. It was intended as a counterpoint to the embellished official portrayals of the GDR and to show the life of East Berliners without propaganda. The book is still being published today in new editions and numerous print runs. In the same year, Harald Hauswald's photographs were sent illegally out of the GDR as original prints to Texas, where they were exhibited at the University of Austin. The images, an expression of artistic self-confidence independent of the state in the GDR, remained archived there for decades. It was not until 2024, after intensive research by OSTKREUZ, that the vintage prints returned to a reunified Berlin that had changed in many ways.

Panel discussion: September 16, 2025, 6:00 P.M. Admission is free, no registration required.

Exhibition dates: until December 31, 2025

Venue: Berlin Wall Memorial in the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus (access via the Spree river promenade), Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin

Click here for details

Ute Mahler and Anne Schönharting are guests at the Goethe-Institut Budapest. As part of the current exhibition “Schein.Freiheit“ (Apparent Freedom), they will take part in a panel discussion on fashion as a mirror of longing, system and self, and present their work. The question of what fashion really shows will dominate the discussion of the high-calibre panel. Between individuality and conformity, between self-realisation and social adaptation, fashion stages the idea of freedom. But is this freedom real – or just a beautiful illusion? The international experts will discuss how fashion shapes desires, worldviews and resistance – yesterday, today and tomorrow.

As a photographer, Ute Mahler shaped the style of the GDR fashion magazine Sibylle. Her work combines political depth with artistic clarity. Anne Schönharting's photographic work addresses role models, origins and the relationship between clothing and identity. Prof. Dr. Anna Keszeg, fashion and media scholar at MOME Budapest, and Almási J. Csaba, fashion photographer, will also be on the podium. Registration is required to participate.

Exhibition date: September 18, 2025, 6:30 P.M.

Venue: Goethe-Institut, Budapest

Click here for details