The Young Generation
Photography in 1980s East Germany

From the late 1970s East Berlin was the most important base for the alternative art community in East Germany (the GDR). Young artists in particular rejected the concept of socialist realism, which was ideologically framed and claimed to depict everyday socialism as it truly was. They came up with counter-positions of their own instead.

More and more young photographers insisted on a subjective treatment of the world and demanded that an uncompromising gaze be turned on life in the GDR. They responded with detachment or resignation to the increasingly obvious disconnect between socialist ideals and social reality, which made their pictures more direct and matter-of-fact. But growing discontent within the country and a number of political changes on an international scale prompted a relaxation in cultural policy, enabling these photographers to show their works in public. Though new aesthetic principles were not encouraged, they were no longer suppressed. These exhibitions organised in galleries, clubs and cultural centres were small, but they were extremely significant for the photography scene in the GDR.