Deutsche Bilder by Dietmar Gottschall
36 of 135 photographs out of the book "Deutsche Bilder" - Fotografien 1965-1980, published by Mitteldeutscher Verlag (2010)
10 000 negatives which his son Juri Gottschall discovered in forgotten boxes after his father‘s death in the attic. A fairy - tale of pictures? Yes, perhaps. But more than that. This is much too sweet for Dietmar Gottschall. He captured in his photos the tough, sweating, drunk, ambivalent, screeching, mute, gloomy, smelly, fascinating, (also repulsively fascinating) reality from the early sixties to the eighties of the past century. Merciless in black and white.
And he did this always with his particular view of the psychologist who like lightning recognizes situations, who instinctively senses something lurking in the air, who reveals straight ahead contradictions – but above all who analyses people. Their loneliness, their greed and their misery. Gottschalls oeuvre is a bore-hole deep into German social history. An excavation of souls.
"Deutschland, ein Bildermärchen", schrieb die FAZ über sein Erbe, die mehr als 10.000 Negative, die sein Sohn Juri Gottschall nach dem Tod des Vaters in vergessenen Kartons auf dem Dachboden fand (...) Dietmar Gottschall hat ... harte Realität festgehalten. Von den frühen sechziger Jahre bis zu den achtzigern des vergangenen Jahrhunderts. Gnadenlos in Schwarz-Weiß. Und immer mit seinem ganz eigenen Blick (...)
Hans-Ulrich Jörges
Editor in Chief of "Stern" Magazine Germany, Journalist of the year 2004 (politics)
