Ostkreuz: The magic of the moment
Ostkreuz, Germany's most successful photo agency, has won the 2013 Konrad Wolf Award, a renowned photography prize. The photographers do more than simply portray - they capture the spirit of the moment.
Upheaval and turning points
Ostkreuz is Germany's most successful photo agency managed by photographers. Its motto is to not only portray, but to take a stance. Ostkreuz photographers often point their lenses at social upheaval and change. The result is so stark and moving that the agency, founded 1990 in Berlin, won the 2013 Konrad Wolf Award.
The name says it all
Almost all of the agency's founding members, like Sibylle Bergemann and Harald Hauswald, are former East Germans. They named the agency after an important East Berlin train station and traffic junction. The name Ostkreuz identifies the agency's origins as well as the opportunity to set off in all directions. Ostkreuz photographers were the first to document the fall of the Berlin Wall.
Artistic roots
Many Ostkreuz photographers belonged to East Germany's free art scene. As early as the 1970s and the 1980s, they gave brutally honest glimpses into everyday life in East Germany, demystifying socialism to a certain degree with their photo articles. They showed the drabness of the pre-fabricated housing developments alongside social misfits like punks in East Berlin.
Analog to digital
Today, 18 photographers from all over the world work for the agency. The youngest is 30 and the oldest more than 60 years old. The scope of their signature photography has expanded: While the founding generation mainly resorted to black-and-white analog photography, their younger colleagues have opted for digital color photography.
Traces of war
The internationally renowned Magnum photo agency was initially a model for Ostkreuz. "If the picture is fuzzy, you didn't get close enough," was a Magnum conviction. They took pictures from the very depths of wars. Ostkreuz often shows the traces, like in this picture of Gaza City after an Israeli air raid: the impact of the war is palpable, but there is still a ray of hope.
Tales of escape
Ostkreuz photographers today travel the world. Their pictures draw attention to global issues like the rural exodus: daily, hundreds-of-thousands of people seeking a better life - in particular in Africa - leave their homes in the countryside for the cities. Gigantic townships with makeshift tin-sheet huts and without running water grow around sprawling cities like Lagos and Cape Town.
Ghost towns
For one of their series, all the Ostkreuz photographers visited mega cities from Manila to Dubai. In the Gulf State, skyscrapers - a symbol of prosperity - really seem to scrape the sky. Asian construction workers toil under grim conditions in the shadow of the oil billions, tearing down old buildings to make way for the new high-rises.
Global worlds
A Senegalese prince in traditional garb poses in front of a Nescafé shack in a Dakar suburb. The young African appears to have capitulated in the face of the global power of international corporations. Sibylle Bergemann, the Grande Dame of East German photography, caught this absurd moment: signals of a globalized world, planted in the sand.
Magic of the moment
To catch the magic of a fleeting moment – Ostkreuz photographers have the knack. Jörg Brüggemann accompanied young backpackers across Asia: Germans, Britons and French looking for adventure and freedom, a Lonely Planet travel guide in hand. Pristine beaches may no longer exist for them, but they can still savor the feeling of weightlessness on the brink of adulthood.