Junger Mann mit Motorrad
Past exhibition

25.09.2019–02.02.2020

"Test the West"

Photographs by Daniel Biskup

The photographer Daniel Biskup travels across East Germany in the first years after the fall of the Wall. He shows how people, streets and landscapes change. The Zeitgeschichtliches Forum presents a selection of his photographs, which capture above all the mood in Saxony at the time.

On the one hand, his photographs reflect the thirst for action and the euphoria of the people who embrace the new freedom and are full of hopes. On the other hand, they also show the disappointment and suffering of those who lose their jobs and their previous, familiar lives as a result of radical change. After almost 30 years, this view at the period of the historic transition is also an examination of the challenges of the present.

Daniel Biskup is one of the most important German photojournalists and documentary photographers of our time. Even as a teenager, he photographs current affairs in his hometown of Bonn. The peace demonstrations and squatted houses are his first motifs. His pictures of German reunification in 1989/1990 marks his breakthrough as a photographer.

Insights
Truck with cigarette advertising
Man with poster "No work in the east"
Erfurt, Chancellor Helmut Kohl on his first visit after the reunification of Germany in March 1991
Young woman looks out of the window
exhibition poster