News

04/22/2026 Sibylle Bergemann · Group Exhibition in Dresden

Sibylle Bergemann’s well-known series “The Monument” is part of the exhibition “Productive Unrest.An exhibition on art and the public at art exhibitions in the GDR in the 1980s” at the robotron-Kantine Dresden. The exhibition examines the 9th and 10th Art Exhibitions as the largest and most widely attended survey exhibitions of the GDR, as well as the alternative culture of the 1980s, as a space reflecting broader social transformations.

An exhibition by the Kunsthaus Dresden in collaboration with the ifa – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen and the Wüstenrot Stiftung.

Opening: May 20, 2026, 7 pm

Duration: May 21 to July 26, 2026

Location: robotron-Kantine, Dresden

04/22/2026 Jörg Brüggemann · Book Talk in Berlin

Jörg Brüggemann will present his work “Tres Viajes,” recently published as a book by Hartmann Books, at the photobook bookstore Bildband Berlin. The exhibition of the same name was on view until recently at Galerie Robert Morat. During the talk, which is free to attend, there will be a live broadcast on Instagram.

Date: May 28, 2026, 6–10 pm; talk begins at 7 pm

Location: Bildband, Berlin

04/22/2026 Group Exhibition in Berlin

Marking the 35th anniversary of the German-Polish Neighbourhood Treaty, the special exhibition “Eastern Territories / Ziemie Zachodnie” at the Dokumentationszentrum Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung brings together renowned photographers from Germany and Poland in a visual dialogue on memory, identity, and transformation. Current photographic positions—some created specifically for the exhibition—by the OSTKREUZ photographers Annette Hauschild, Thomas Meyer, Linn Schröder, Ina Schoenenburg, and Heinrich Völkel will be shown alongside works by Karolina Gembara, Katarzyna Mirczak, Filip Piotrowicz, Natalia Poniatowska, and Wojtek Sienkiewicz.

At the heart of the exhibition are German-Polish perspectives on a shared space of memory in Poland. For many Germans, the former “eastern territories” of the German Reich are associated with flight and expulsion, with memories of the loss of homeland and the continuation of these profound experiences in countless family histories. They form part of a collective memory that continues to shape identities in Germany today. From a Polish perspective, the “Ziemie Zachodnie”—the western territories after 1945—carry a different meaning: many of those who settled there had themselves been displaced from the East and bore the experience of German occupation. It was about arriving in an unfamiliar place, making a difficult new beginning, and inhabiting a region shaped by Germans that only gradually became home. These perspectives are fundamentally different, and yet inextricably intertwined.

The artistic works of these photographers from both countries reveal how traces of a process—still visible and tangible today, shaped by appropriation and letting go—have become inscribed in landscapes, architecture, and family narratives on both sides of the Oder River.

Opening: May 28, 2026, 6:30 pm

Duration: May 29, 2026 to January 17, 2027

Location: Dokumentationszentrum Flucht, Vertreibung, Versöhnung, Berlin

04/22/2026 Sebastian Wells · At the Photo Festival in Sarajevo

As part of the Sarajevo Photography Festival, Sebastian Wells will present his work “Arena” in a performative lecture. The project explores the Olympic Games over the past ten years and was recently published as a book by Spector Books. The exact date of the lecture will be announced on the festival’s website.

Opening Week: June 1 to June 30, 2026

Location: Sarajevo

04/22/2026 Tamara Eckhardt · Participation in a Festival in France

Tamara Eckhardt is represented with her work “La vie en rose” at the festival “Mesnographies,” which takes place in the rural town of Les Mesnuls, west of Paris.

For “La vie en rose,” Tamara Eckhardt has been accompanying a community of women for several years in the rural rose-growing region of Kalaat M’Gouna. The work tells of the lives of women in a male-dominated society, placing particular emphasis on female solidarity as well as on the symbolic power of the Damask rose cultivated there.

Duration: June 6 to July 19, 2026

Location: Parc municipal de Les Mesnuls

04/22/2026 Sibylle Bergemann · Solo Exhibition in Göppingen

The Kunsthalle Göppingen is currently presenting a solo exhibition by Sibylle Bergemann, organized in cooperation with the Estate Sibylle Bergemann, titled “Sibylle Bergemann. Photography 1966–2010.”

Sibylle Bergemann (1941–2010) developed a multifaceted body of work over more than four decades, encompassing cityscapes as well as fashion and portrait photography, alongside essayistic reportages. Her images move between dream and social reality and are characterized by a precise, often poetic visual composition. Recurring themes such as the city and portraits of women, as well as her photographic travels to Dakar, Moscow, New York, and Paris, structure her work.

As part of the exhibition, a talk will take place with Frieda von Wild and Lily von Wild, the photographer’s daughter and granddaughter, who manage the Estate Sibylle Bergemann.

Talk with the Estate: June 11, 2026, 7 pm

Duration: until June 28, 2026

Location: Kunsthalle Göppingen

04/22/2026 Ute Mahler · Group Exhibition in Hayama, Japan

The Museum of Modern Art, Hayama will present the exhibition “Unprecedented: Women Photographers from the GDR” from mid-June, featuring Ute Mahler.

Women who built careers as photographers in the GDR before its dissolution in 1990 and created outstanding artistic works embody a perspective that has often been overlooked in the study of the history of German photography.

The exhibition presents fifteen East German women photographers whose work continues to have an impact today. It invites not only Japanese audiences to reflect on the role their works played in shaping visual culture in the former GDR.

Opening: June 13, 2026

Duration: June 13 to August 30, 2026

Location: Museum of Modern Art, Hayama

04/22/2026 S. Bergemann, U. Mahler & W. Mahler · Group Exhibition

The exhibition “Human Topographies. Art Collection Deutsche Börse” brings together around 60 works from the 1950s to the present by more than 25 international artists, including Sibylle Bergemann as well as Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler.

In the exhibition curated by Cornelia Siebert, selected works are presented that make visible the diverse facets of human-shaped living environments. These range from densely built Asian megacities to North American metropolises and small towns on the German and French periphery, to the vast expanses of sparsely populated landscapes in the American Midwest—as well as the many variations in between. The works on display illustrate the wide range of ways in which landscape, architecture, and human presence can interact.

Duration: until August 16, 2026

Location: Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation, Eschborn

02/18/2026 Jörg Brüggemann · Artist talk and solo exhibition in Berlin

Jörg Brüggemann's three-part series ‘Tres Viajes’ is on display at the Robert Morat Gallery in Berlin until the end of May. It is an exploration of Chile, its nature and its people, as well as an examination of the complex relationships that develop between individuals.

The exhibition consists of the series ‘Mi madre tiene novio’ (2018), ‘El derecho de vivir en paz’ (2019) and ‘Aguas que no has de beber’ (2022). As part of the exhibition, Ingo Taubhorn will hold an artist talk with Jörg Brüggemann about his work.

The book Tres Viajes is published by Hartmann Books.

Artist talk: 7 March 2026, 4 p.m.

Exhibition: until 21 March 2026

Hier klicken für Details

02/18/2026 Espen Eichhöfer · Book presentation in Oslo, Norway

In 2024, Espen Eichhöfer was selected by the jury of the Norwegian Journal of Photography as one of eight photographers to receive a grant from the Fritt Ord Foundation to realise his series Deep Black Well. Excerpts from this work are now being published for the first time in the new issue of the Norwegian Journal of Photography.

For this project, Eichhöfer has been photographing in Norway for two and a half years, based on his examination of the changes in Norwegian society after the country was able to build up immense oil wealth. He asks himself what happens to the people and identity of a country that actually exudes simplicity and sobriety.

Book presentation: 6 March 2026, 6 p.m.

02/18/2026 Anne Schönharting · Group exhibition in Hagen

Anne Schönhartings fotografisches Langzeitprojekt „Habitat“ ist Teil der von Pia Goebel kuratierten Ausstellung „Zuhause / at home“ im Osthaus Museum Hagen. Diese widmet sich aktuellen künstlerischen Perspektiven auf

Anne Schönharting's long-term photographic project ‘Habitat’ is part of the exhibition ‘Zuhause / at home’ curated by Pia Goebel at the Osthaus Museum Hagen. The exhibition is dedicated to current artistic perspectives on living, shelter and accommodation. Paintings, photographs, drawings, sculptures, video works and installations by 20 contemporary artists revolve around the home as a place, but also around being at home as a feeling.

In 2012, Anne Schönharting began photographing the residents of Berlin-Charlottenburg in their natural habitat. Over a period of 10 years, she portrayed and staged people and their homes in this traditional Berlin neighbourhood. In her carefully composed images, we see people and their homes in wondrous situations.

The book of the same name, ‘Habitat / Berlin-Charlottenburg’, published by Hartmann Books, can be purchased at the OSTKREUZ Shop.

Opening: 27 February 2026, 6 p.m.

Duration: 28 February to 21 June 2026

02/18/2026 Sebastian Wells · Solo exhibition and performative lecture

Coinciding with the Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina, Galerie Springer Berlin is presenting a solo exhibition of Sebastian Wells' works on the Olympic Games since 2016. In ‘ARENA,’ Sebastian Wells examines the Olympic Games as a global mass spectacle and questions the media, spatial and social mechanisms that shape this event. His work deliberately opposes heroic, nationally charged visual traditions of sport and draws attention to the structures that give rise to perception, attention and meaning in the first place.

At the same time, Spector Verlag is publishing the first volume of the two-part publication ‘ARENA, Take 1: Facing the Spectacle,’ designed by the Scrollan collective. A performative lecture with Sebastian Wells will take place as part of the exhibition.

Opening: 20 February 2026, 6 to 9 p.m.

Performative lecture: 27 February 2026, 7 p.m.

Duration: 21 February to 4 April 2026

02/18/2026 Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, Ludwig Schirmer · Exhibition

Excerpts from Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler's long-term project ‘Ein Dorf 1950-2022’ (A Village 1950-2022) are part of the exhibition ‘Community. Photography and Community’ curated by Linda Conze at the Museum Kunstpalast Düsseldorf, which highlights the multifaceted relationship between photography and community in history and the present.

Early works by Ludwig Schirmer, Ute Mahler's father, are also part of and the starting point for the extraordinary project ‘Ein Dorf’ (A Village), which spans 70 years and paints a multi-layered portrait of a village in Thuringia: Berka. Three perspectives, three generations – and a family history that tells of change and continuity, of leaving and returning, of the familiar and the new.

Duration: until 25 May 2026

01/05/2026 Harald Hauswald · New edition of the book

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/

10/23/2025 Ute Mahler & Werner Mahler · Solo exhibition in Hamburg

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

10/23/2025 Annette Hauschild und Ute Mahler · Group exhibition in Potsdam

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

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

10/23/2025 Sebastian Wells · Magazine publication in Berlin

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

10/23/2025 Frank Schinski · Solo exhibition in Dortmund

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

10/23/2025 Ute Mahler · Solo exhibition in Tübingen

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