A propaganda

 

Welcome news from abroad

 

The first image image was photographed in Berlin in 1992 (I am pretty sure) and it exists as a 30 x 40 conventional photographic print. It shows a well known social realist mural by the East German artist Ling that told in story form the formation and progress of the party on its way to building a worker's paradise. The mural is/was located on the building which was an office for the Treuhand (the government agency responsible for selling off East Germany) and the mural; was at that time in the process of being removed to another, more appropriate place ( the museum of lost hopes and broken dreams perhaps...). The girls in uniforms are members of the Free german youth organization (from what I know of it ....a bit like a political girl guides) and the central girl has a pose which is like an inversion of the woman who is casting the scarlet shadow over the whole. A man stands behind this woman and projects her figure as a shadow onto the larger than life mural to equalize the juxtaposition to some degree.

The second image was made a year earlier, in this picture we see an apartment propped with East german kitsch, it is around dinnertime and a man and his daughter are watching the news. The screen on the television is an ironic montage of a cigarette advertisement and a magazine cover that reflect on the change going on in the two germanies. (In effect one germany bought the other eh . . . )