More beauty for our palaces!
“Schöner unsere Paläste!” (“More beauty for our palaces!”) was a slogan painted by some jokesters on many of the walls of the derelict houses in the old East Berlin. With the houses, the whole GDR (German Democratic Republic, i.e. East Germany) crumbled, and all it took was a big wind to finally blow it away.
Almost unnoticed by the public, the Berlin photographer Gerd Danigel created striking images of the GDR’s last decade and the subsequent upheaval. He watched the people in his hometown Berlin and in Eastern Germany – people on streets and in squares, in pubs and in shops, in railway stations and factories. His photos are characterized by tenderness and deep affection, yet they also contain a lot of humor. This first major selection of his pictures lets you discover the opus of a photographer who doesn’t need to fear the comparison with well-known representatives of East German photo realism.
Gerd Danigel
Schöner unsere Paläste!
Berlin photographies 1978-1998
Edited by Mathias Bertram,
Publisher: Lehmstedt Verlag, Leipzig 2011
159 pages, 24,90 Euro
ISBN: 978-3942473088
If you order directly from me, I’ll be happy to sign your copy for you at your request.
gdanigel [at] web.de
