La condition humaine

Stephanie Steinkopf

Manhattan, 2009-2012

Manhattan is located in Brandenburg, close to the Polish border. In GDR times, two four-story apartment blocks were erected. What were once prestige properties, the residents eventually christened Manhattan. Stephanie Steinkopf accompanied them over three years and captured life on the outer fringes of German society in images that are as disturbing as they are sensitive.

Thomas Meyer

Inside Stasi, 2007

The Ministry for State Security of the GDR had set up a control apparatus to spy on its people, to put them under pressure and thus to control them. The wiretapping and surveillance technology and the amount of data the ministry collected about its citizens were of an unbelievable scale. Thomas Meyer visited the places that tell of the Stasi’s activities.

Werner Mahler

Die Abiturienten (The High School Graduates), since 1977

In 1977, the graduates of a high school in Oranienburg face their future. In the following years, Werner Mahler portrayed them at regular intervals. Over time, more than a few have disappeared from the ranks. In this long-term project, the gaps – like the portraits – tell of what life has to offer: Hope, success, failure or death – and in this generation also of the collapse of a system of values.

Mila Teshaieva

Promising Waters, 2011

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a profound and complex process of change was set in motion in the region around the Caspian Sea. In Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan, the striving for a new national self-confidence has set in, and at the same time the battle for oil and gas occurrences has begun. The natural resources are pulling a lot of money into the region and fueling great expectations. The impact on the environment and the needs of society remain unaccounted for.

Linn Schröder

Self portrait with twins and one breast, 2012

Linn Schröder photographed herself during her pregnancy and after the birth of her twins. Her self-portrait connects two profound experiences that mark the beginning and end of a life – both extremes are united in one image. They stand for beginning and end, for life and death.

Heinrich Holtgreve

The internet as a place, since 2012

Heinrich Holtgreve explores the abstraction that is the internet and uses associative images to make it visually tangible how technical inventions influence and change human relationships. Besides factual and visible structures, the internet, above all, is one thing: a network of networks, an abstract entity of concurrence, visibility and invisibility, order and anarchy, billions and billions of connections – and a lot of humor.

Ute Mahler

Living Together, 1972–1988

In the early 1970s, Ute Mahler asked herself how people in her country, the GDR, lived together and how it could be depicted photographically. Over a period of 16 years, she used her camera to follow families, friends, lovers, children, acquaintances and strangers throughout the country until, in her opinion, she had found all facets of living together – and drew the private panorama of a society along the way.

Tobias Kruse

Terminal, 2012

Tel Aviv’s old bus station, closed and half demolished in 2009, is the realm of outcasts. Ukrainian and German prostitutes, hustlers and transvestites from Israel and the Palestinian territories meet in the ruins. Many of them are on heroin or crystal meth. What is existential elsewhere in Israel loses its meaning here: it no longer matters who you are or where you come from.

Sibylle Bergemann

P2, 1974

u0022P2u0022 is the name of a certain prefabricated building type which was first built in the early 1960s in the GDR. Not only is it a testament to the housing program in East Germany, but also metaphor for its social structure: the open kitchen allowed the woman to communicate with her family in the living room and at the same time incentivized the men to do housework. u0022P2u0022 tells of a past everyday life and its actors.

Harald Hauswald

Mainzer Straße, 1990

The street “Mainzer Strasse” in Berlin-Friedrichshain bore a picture of devastation in November 1990. The West Berlin squatter scene had moved there after the fall of the Wall, and now the police were about to evict them – despite being tolerated by the building owners. The initially peaceful demonstrations turned into militant riots when the police used massive violence to destroy the barricades erected by the autonomists. Harald Hauswald captured the explosive atmosphere with his camera.