Here’s part two of my personal selection of Ostkreuz work (find part one here).

Thomas Meyer: Repository for nuclear was … - showing an underground mine used to store radioactive waste

Thomas Meyer: Inside Stasi - showing traces for East Germany’s Stasi secret service, which used to spy widely on its own citizens. People often complain about this kind of detached style of photography, but I think it works so well for projects like this one: Instead of creating some artificial drama with photographic means, it’s left up to the viewer to imagine what went on - which is what successful movie directors used to do before CGI made it too tempting to show everything.

Julian Röder: Election Campaign 2009, a portrait of Germany’s election campaign.

Jens Rötzsch: Pentecost meeting of the FDJ. The FDJ was East Germany’s youth organization; and I suppose part of the appeal of this work for me (I grew up in West Gemany) is to see something I’m completely unfamiliar with. That said, the photography is very nice, with a great eye for colour.

Ludwig Schirmer: At Home. If I understand the text correctly, Schirmer was never trained as a photographer, and a large part of his work was discovered only after his death. Beautiful images.

Jordis Antonia Schlösser: Baltic states, Lativa, a portrait of Latvia the Summer before it became a EU member.

Jordis Antonia Schlösser: Sex and Islam: “In early 2005 Jordis Antonia Schlösser visits Egypt and the Lebanon where she meets various people with quite different ideas of sexuality. On the one hand, the photographer observed secretively admitted caresses although those are generally not accepted in public. On the other, Schloesser detected a distinctly noticeable permissiveness among other people.”

Anne Schönhartig: Helpless helpers, a portrait of an unemployed single mother in Germany