CAUGHT: THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC

Kuehn, Karl Gernot

ISBN 10: 0520204360 / ISBN 13: 9780520204362

Published by University of California Press, Berkeley, 1997

About this Item

8vo., xi, 305 pp., nearly 150 b&w photographs. A fine copy in dust jacket. "Behind the Iron Curtain, against all odds, photography flourished as an art in the German Democratic Republic. The many images in this volume amply demonstrate that fact while also providing an illustrated social history of people 'caught' in the conflicting dictates of ideology, artistic oppression, a troubled national past, and basic human desires." (jacket).

Seller Inventory # 27726

Bibliographic Details

• Title: CAUGHT: THE ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC
• Publisher: University of California Press, Berkeley
• Publication Date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0520204360
• ISBN 13: 9780520204362
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: First edition.
• Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included
• Seller catalogs:
  • HISTORY

About this title

Synopsis

Behind the Iron Curtain, against all odds, photography secretly flourished as an art in the German Democratic Republic. The author writes of East Germany from 1945 - four years before the socialist nation was officially carved out of the former German Reich - to 1989, when the dictatorship fell and 40 years of isolation ended. Analyzing how Walter Ulbricht and Erich Honecker harnessed the power of photography to shape and reflect the paradigmatic Marxist state, Kuehn reveals how this very same process inadvertently helped nurture individual creativity and the "silent revolution" of the 1980s. "Caught" offers an appraisal of the artistic, social and political evolution of the GDR through the eyes of the participating photographers. It is an intimate portrayal of a people "caught" in the conflicting dicatates of ideology, artistic oppression, a troubled national past and basic human desires.

About the Author

Karl Gernot Kuehn is an internationally known photographer whose work has been widely exhibited at museums and university galleries in the United States, Canada, and Europe. He is the author of Views of Los Angeles (1979), a photographic chronicle of the city's architectural evolution. He currently teaches the history of photography at California State University, Northridge, and the University of California, Los Angeles.