The exhibition “EAST” of photographs from the VNG Verbundnetz Gas AG collection opens at Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst Leipzig at 6 p.m. on 12 April 2002. “EAST” is curated by Frank Heinrich Müller, Julia Schäfer and Barbara Steiner.
In 1992, the company established contacts to four young photographers from Eastern Germany: VNG Verbundnetz Gas AG commissioned Max Baumann, Matthias Hoch, Frank Heinrich Müller and Thomas Wolf to photographically record changes and developments occurring in the new Länder. Three of the above-mentioned photographers (excluding Matthias Hoch) had shortly beforehand documented radical changes taking place in the Bitterfeld area, publishing these in the photo book “Das Bitterfeld”. These photographs were further complemented by the planned acquisition of works by Hermann Walter, who already took photographs of architectural changes in Leipzig in the early 20th century, as well as by Evelyn Richter, Marion Wenzel, Erasmus Schröter and Ulrich Wüst. In the mid-1990s, some of these photographers began taking pictures of places they had photographed earlier. These works were also acquired for the collection. The VNG collection has become one of the most important ones of its kind of Eastern German photography.
The exhibition at GfZK begins with the VNG Verbundnetz Gas AG’s collection history. Starting with the commissioned photographs of the early 1990s – constituting the core of the collection – the exhibition offers a chronological overview of the collection’s development from 1992 to 2000. It concludes with recent works by Max Baumann, Matthias Hoch, Frank Heinrich Müller and Thomas Wolf. “EAST” implicitly addresses questions of documentary photography and its differing traditions in West and East Germany respectively. The exhibited photographs recount stories, and it is precisely this narrative quality that distinguishes them from a form of documentary photography seeking to deny emotions.
The symposium on 31.5 and 1.6 addresses documentary photography from Eastern Germany in terms of production strategies, narrative structure and cultural predicaments.
