Common ground
Subtitle: photography in Germany during the Cold War
By: Sarah E. James
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 267
ISBN-13: 9780300184440
Subjects: Photography; Cold War; History
Description: This ambitious publication is the first book to thoroughly evaluate the photography that emerged during Germany’s geopolitical division from the 1950s to the 1980s. With richly illustrated and exhaustively researched analyses of photographic projects from East and West Germany, including exhibitions, photo-essays, private archives, and photo-books, Common Ground constructs a comparative perspective, examining how sequence, seriality, and repetition were mobilized to produce forms of solidarity and political agency. Author Sarah James places German postwar photography in the context of Soviet, American, and European photographic developments; the specific cultural experiences of the Cold War; and the shifting politics of German identity. By reconsidering the relationship between divergent cultures of the pre-war Weimar period and the Cold War era, Common Ground prompts new readings of major figures such as Bernd and Hilla Becher, Karl Blossfeldt, and August Sander, as well as historically neglected figures such as Karl Pawek, Evelyn Richter, and Rudolf Schäfer. The result is a groundbreaking study of the political and pedagogical functions of documentary photography.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Cold war primers : German identity and photography in the postwar; title: A post-fascist family of man : Karl Pawek's Cold War photo-essay & its stereoscopic vision; title: Evelyn Richter's exact seeing : the public & private faces of East Germany; title: Bernd and Hilla Bechers' industrial archive : re-enchanting the everyday & resisting reunification; title: Rudolf Schifer : the dead-end of portraiture & the socialist self; title: Epilogue : Michael Schmidt, making German history strange.