Horse market and Heringsdorf

Few photographers have captured life in the GDR more vividly, accurately, and with more empathy than Harald Hauswald. Born in 1954, Hauswald’s photographs show everyday life under real socialism in the 1970s and 80s beyond the East German Communist Party (SED) and the Free Democratic Party (FDJ), the Berlin Wall and the military parade: his images depict dance tournaments, pub nights, street scenes. Hauswald also documented the development of urban space in East Berlin and the various oppositional groups in East Germany, artists and youth cultures including punks and hippies. The bleak years before the fall of the Berlin Wall are as palpable in his pictures as the euphoria and disillusionment of the initial period of upheaval after reunification—a unique document of German-German history. Our online picture gallery presents a small selection of images from Hauswald’s C/O Berlin retrospective ›Voll das Leben!‹, which will open during Berlin Art Week.