Visual History Study
Associated Project

The research project examines photographs and visual discourses on significant themes of economic, political and socio-cultural development: work, migration, social ideals and happiness. A distinction is made between state promises of happiness and individual and social striving for happiness and a fulfilled life. The exemplary analyses of visual representations in photojournalistic, artistic, and private photographic practices range in time from the building of the Wall through late socialism to 1989/90 and into the first decade of the post-socialist transformation. The GDR is understood as a heterogeneous society with its own migration history and corresponding image archives; the research project can draw on a stock of private photographs of migrants already collected.

Dr. Axel Doßmann and Dr. Isabel Enzenbach are jointly designing the visual history study for a package proposal to the DFG.