Behind Immaterial and Material Divides: East German Photography, 1949-1989.

Abstract

In 1950, Walter Ulbricht declared socialist realism as the official artistic method in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Using the implementation of this method in the East German art world as a starting point, this dissertation examines the careers of several influential photographers, notably Arno Fischer, Brigitte Voigt, Helga Paris, Gundula Schulze Eldowy, and Maria Sewcz, whose artistic practices did not cater to the ideological imperatives of socialist realism. These photographers, who neither saw nor positioned themselves as political dissidents, not only sustained their independent practices, but also had successful careers in the GDR. Some were hired to teach photography at the Academy of Arts (Berlin-Weißensee) and the Academy of Fine Arts (Leipzig) and to work as editors and photographers at popular illustrated magazines, including Das Magazin and Sibylle, both of which contained little to no overt news and permitted photographers to practice under the radar of official censorship. Others were able to disseminate their work in small exhibitions organized by the East German Cultural Association. By the late 1970s, when photography was recognized as an autonomous art form in both Germanys, these photographers were granted further opportunities to circulate their work. Their photographs began to appear in specialized photography journals and state-sponsored art exhibitions, often alongside regime-affirming propaganda. By investigating the increasing support offered to Fischer, Voigt, Paris, Schulze Eldowy, and Sewcz by the East German state and its cultural apparatuses, this dissertation challenges the labels “official” and “unofficial” photography: it argues that the classification “official” can also be applied to their work and has little value in identifying the different kinds of photography and photographic practices that flourished in the GDR. Based on the disparate types of photographic images that circulated in East Germany’s visual culture in the 1980s, this dissertation also claims that cultural authorities no longer knew how to treat photography, at least not to the same degree as they did in the 1950s and 1960s, and failed to reach a consensus on how to photographically depict the GDR during the country’s last decade of existence.