Work, Migration and Happiness. Photographic appropriation of East German societies in the 1960s to 1990s

Visual History Study

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.