Harald Hauswald: Voll das Leben

From 12 September 2020 to 23 January 2021 C/O Berlin presents with "Voll das Leben" the first retrospective of Harald Hauswald. Hauswald is one of the most eminent East German photographers. Together with Sibylle Bergemann, Ute Mahler, Werner Mahler, and others, he founded OSTKREUZ – Agentur der Fotografen, a photographer-run agency. The exhibition shows roughly 250 photographs taken between the late 1970s and the mid-1990s, including a large number of previously unpublished images.

Raucous, flamboyantly dressed punks, hippies, and kissing couples in a sea of Trabi cars, confrontational banners and demonstrators at Alexanderplatz in East Berlin, shadowy figures and drunks at festivals and neighborhood bars, law-abiding citizens waiting patiently at stops: Harald Hauswald’s gaze is authentic and tender. His images radiate a sympathy for the objects and people he photographs, preserving their dignity and setting them apart from the surrounding madness and decay. The photographer shows the monotony and slowness of life in East Germany, bearing witness to an insular and isolated world shortly before its downfall. In contrast to the West’s prevalent images of the GDR as a country defined by the socialist state and the Free German Youth organization, by the Berlin Wall and barbed wire, by marches and military parades, Hauswald’s photographs offer unique and revealing insight into everyday socialist life, showing the evolving cityscape of East Berlin and the activities of opposition groups, artists, and youth subcultures.