Harald Hauswald did what no other photographer in his time succeeded in doing: he documented everyday life. While that may sound like the simplest thing to do, in East Berlin under the GDR, it was quite the opposite. The documentation of that particular everyday life was sternly forbidden, any glimpse of it lost amidst propoganda – rendering the very existence of Hauswald’s work a feat.
Intense yet distanced, the dynamic works of Hauswald serve as a detailed account of Berlin in the 70s and 80s. He didn’t stop there, however, continuing with his camera through the transformation into a reunified Germany, up to this very day.
There’s just something about Hauswald’s photographs. For one thing, the characteristic distance between camera and subject gives the distinct impression that he is watching, not participating – and hints at a subtle skepticism. Coupled with this skepticism, however, is a certain sense of change – that which evolves, next to that which remains the same. This binary lies within so many of his photographs – a movement within a frozen moment, a truth hidden amongst many lies, a hope buried deep under many disappointments.
Hauswald, a founding member of the well-known photo agency Ostkreuz, was born in 1954 in Radebeul, a small town near Dresden. He became an apprentice to a photographer and later, in 1976, graduated from photography school. Around that time, already under state surveillance, he made his way through the GDR, to Berlin, exploring, documenting. His works from the late seventies through the early eighties depict the binary that was present even within Hauswald’s relationship, as a German, with the GDR; as the writer Lutz Rathenow put it, “We hated the government, but loved the people.”
But even after 1990, Hauswald, has found that even with major changes in Germany, the struggle, his subject, remains – albeit under a different name. Thus he continues to document, as he always has, turning his lens on the contradictions and pitfalls of capitalism.
Uninterested in spectacle, mesmirized by the seemingly mundane, Hauswald continues his dissection of everyday life, the little things – the things that can only be seen when one takes a moment to stop, really look, and recognize them.
Opening Reception: Friday, October 16th, 19:00 – 23:00
Exhibition: October 17th, 2009 – November 14th, 2009
Pool Gallery
Tucholskystr.38
10117 Berlin Germany
Phone.49.30.24342462
