Stories of a Vanished Country

From the Photo Archives of Wolfgang Schröter

Wolfgang Schröter

From the late 1950s on, Wolfgang Schröter (1928–2012), a native of Wolfen, Germany, worked closely with the advertising department of the camera film production facility VEB AGFA Filmfabrik Wolfen (laterORWO Wolfen). His photographs could be found in ads, trade fairs, and exhibitions, and showed the working process at the facility. This work also provided him with numerous possibilities for experimental photography, such as coloured photograms and large-scale slides; this was followed by works in and for other large industrial companies, with one main focus during this time being optics manufacturer Carl Zeiss Jena.
In 1972, Schröter took on a teaching job at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig. He became a professor for media art in 1992. His images tell living stories as well as the history of the technology and industry of a bygone country. Franz-Mehring-Platz 1 presents a selection of his works from his native region of Bitterfeld-Wolfen and from the Carl Zeiss Jena factory from the 1960s to the 1980s.