There are people photographers and those who prefer to capture landscapes in pictures. Perhaps that's a somewhat simplistic categorisation. I find both difficult, capturing people in a picture that tells more than a passing glance, or putting landscapes in a frame that gives a sense of the space behind them.
Helga Paris was both a photographer of people and landscapes. Whereby her landscapes were mostly cities – Berlin, Halle (Saale), Leipzig, Rome. She photographed houses like faces. They were often old houses with scars, wounds and peeling plaster. War-damaged buildings or decrepit huts. This may be due to her biography. Helga Paris was born in 1938 in Gollnow, in what is now Poland. She graduated from high school in Zossen, near Berlin, where she studied fashion design and moved to Winsstraße in 1966, which became something like her personal open-air photo studio. At the end of the 1960s, Helga Paris became a freelance photographer – in every sense of the word. She became THE photographer of East Berlin, as Annett Gröschner wrote in her obituary in the taz*.
Helga Paris consistently photographed her neighbourhood in simple black and white. After all, grey is colourful enough and does not distract from the essentials, the glow on the faces or the tattered facades of the houses. The people photographed by Helga Paris were often young, much younger than the houses in front of or inside which they stand. Some of the people are famous, others wear apron dresses and a quiet smile. Almost all of them are looking directly into the camera – or at the woman behind it. The photographer's affection can be read in each of the faces. Helga Paris stopped taking (professional) photographs in 2008. She died on Monday in her flat in Winsstraße.
We have 4 photo volumes by Helga Paris in the ZZF library:
The volume "Diva in Grau: Häuser und Gesichter in Halle", republished by the Halle (Saale) City Museum in 2006, documents an exhibition that was banned in 1986 (4° ZZF 20070).
An overview of her work can be found in "Helga Paris Fotografie" (2013, 4° ZZF 24576). In 2020, "Leipzig Hauptbahnhof 1981/82" (ZZF 37842) was published, followed a year later by "Künstlerporträts" (ZZF 37506).
She is also represented in the illustrated books
"Das pure Leben: Fotografien aus der DDR; Bd. 2: Die späten Jahre 1975-1990" (4° ZZF 25940),
"Geschlossene Gesellschaft: künstlerische Fotografie in der DDR 1949-1989" (4° ZZF 24071),
"Eros und Stasi: ostdeutsche Fotografie" (4° ZZF 36335),
"Foto-Anschlag: vier Generationen ostdeutscher Fotografen" (4° ZZF 14233),
"Ost sieht West, West sieht Ost: Deutschland im Frühjahr 1990" (4° ZZF 24071) and
"Berlin, November 1989: 14 Fotografen aus Ost und West erleben die Öffnung der Mauer" (4° ZZF 13006).
*https://taz.de/Helga-Paris-ist-tot/!5991050/
(08.02.2024)