25 Years After the Fall of the Berlin Wall

How I Experienced the Opening of the Border as a Photojournalist

Günter Zint

The exhibition presents photographs by German documentary photographer and photojournalist Günter Zint. Stern magazine contracted Zint on November 9, 1989 to take photos for a special edition featuring the opening of the East German border. While many of his colleagues were busy shooting people hacking holes into the Wall, Zint retreated further into the hinterland, pointing his camera at day-to-day scenes and banal objects of a world in the throes of dramatic upheaval. During the first two weeks after the opening of the Wall, Zint shot more than one thousand photos. The exhibition presents a selection of this work with additional photographs taken in East Germany the following year, leading up to the first elections of a reunified Germany in December 1990. These images of transition show an entire social order, culture, and consumerist world succumb to one newly emergent – complete with window dressings, product prices, building façades, shopping promenades, and the election campaigns of the West German political parties. For the first time, approximately 50 selected images of the series are being shown, offering details of a world in turmoil ‘that even many former East German citizens no longer remember.’ (Zint)