Paul Sullivan talks to legendary GDR photographer Harald Hauswald about his life and work in East Berlin…
The grey, dismal atmosphere of 1980s East Berlin asserts itself even beyond the monochrome aesthetic of Harald Hauswald’s famous black and white photographs. Lone figures stroll grim-faced along empty Prenzlauer Berg streets. Exhausted workers deliver coal to the neighbourhood’s poorly heated, crumbling tenements. A small boy sits in the driver seat of a burnt-out Trabant in a desolate courtyard, rubble piled high in the foreground; presumably he finds his surroundings completely normal.
Hauswald’s images of the GDR’s state apparatus also possess the kind of joyless sterility familiar from such imagery: the starchily formal military parades and public FDJ (Free German Youth) events, the demos and protest marches, the sinister concrete watchtowers and never-ending construction projects.
Contrasting with these bleak scenes are Hauswald’s captures of the area’s dissident subcultures—surly squatters, spiky-haired punks, snogging teens—that didn’t officially exist in East Germany, as well as images that showcase the photographer’s fine sense of irony and humour, and prompt regular smirks and chuckles from the exhibition’s visitors: romantic couples, arm-in-arm, surrounded by a sea of sparkling Trabants; a sign claiming ‘our diversity is great!” above a shop selling a desultory ensemble of kitchen goods; a beaming child on a carousel that, upon closer inspection, isn’t riding a giraffe or a unicorn, but a military tank.
“In reality this documentary approach was the only type of photography we could do in East Germany,” points out Hauswald as he leads us—myself, C/O Berlin chief curator Felix Hoffmann, and his filmmaker friend Leander Hausmann, known for his cult movie Sonnenallee—on a personal tour through his exhibition, “Voll das Leben!” (”Full of Life!)”, picking out random images and regaling us with anecdotes and back-stories.
“We always shot in black and white, not because we wanted to copy the classic reportage photographers, but because that was the best and cheapest film available; colour film in the GDR was more expensive and poorer quality. Private and public life was also somewhat blurred, and we had more time for this kind of work…our regular jobs were usually quite relaxed whereas in West Berlin or West Germany there was generally more work pressure, and less time to pursue hobbies.”
Hauswald is exactly what you might expect from an East Berliner—wholly unpretentious, forthright, not prone to fancy airs or hyperbole. With his long grey hair pulled into a pony tail, glasses perched professorially on the end of his nose rather than directly in front of his pale blue eyes, and casual clothing (zip-up jumper, light outdoor jacket, jeans), he cuts a largely inconspicuous figure as he leads us through what is his biggest retrospective exhibition to date.
Despite the wall-sized photo of him as a youth at the entrance of the e…