Photographing people
An exhibit of photos by Stefan Moses opens in Kyiv
The Dim Mykoly Gallery at Kyiv’s Palace of Children and Youth has just opened “Deutsche Vita,” a collection of works (from 1947 to the present) by the German photographer Stefan Moses. The 55 photographs focus on German society’s most important historic decades and may be regarded as a review of the German photographer’s oeuvre. His portraits of old and young people, artists, and representatives of the intellectual elite, the rich and poor, help the viewer to revisit everyday life in postwar Germany.
The exhibit’s best works were chosen from the series “Farewell and Beginning: East German Portraits,” which won acclaim from the Berlin public in 1991. The Kyiv exhibit consists of “Germans — West,” “Germans — East,” “Celebrities in Old Age,” “Mirror Reflections,” “Artists Don Masks,” and “German Society.”
The “Germans — West” series marks Moses’s departure from the old style. The photographer places people against the neutral background of a light-gray cloth and seems to cut them out of the whirlwind of events for the photograph, which allows each person to be presented uniquely in front of the camera.
In the mid-1960s Moses began inviting distinguished contemporaries to be photographed in the woods. For example, the series “Celebrities in Old Age” is set in unusual surroundings and gives clearer images of such personalities as politician Willy Brandt, actress Elisabeth Bergner, and puppeteer Kathe Kruse, and many other German figures. Since many of these people are dead now and most of them were once expelled from Germany, this series reflects the artist’s aspiration to depict an integrated country.
The “Mirror Reflection” series is an interesting example of looking at oneself in the mirror. Moses not only gave people an opportunity to have their pictures taken with a self-timer; he would also photograph them as though they were photographing themselves. He was thus documenting the unity of man and his image. He even gave a subtitle to the mirror reflection series: “Every Man Is a Tiny Society.”
The series “Artists Don Masks” is a kind of game with truth. In just about five minutes needed for reincarnation Moses documents the sudden appearance of new images. These photographs portray the artist Otto Dix, composer Boris Blacher, and filmmaker Herbert Achternbusch, and other famous Germans in untypical poses.
According to exhibit curator Dr. Matthias Harder, Moses succeeded in portraying ordinary people: in his photos we see people like us and, next to them, well-known figures with whom we can identify ourselves. Harder believes that since Ukraine is now searching for its national identity, it can benefit from projects like this. “Stefan Moses photographed Germans in very hard times for Germany, when the country’s identity was on the agenda, so people from other countries can borrow a lot from these photographs and adjust it to their own realities.”
