The Day of Change

Gerald Zörner

On November 7, 1989, the last demonstration against election fraud took place in East Berlin; that same day, the political leadership of East Germany resigned. Two days later, East German citizens were free to cross the country’s borders – East Germany had ceased to exist. The seven photographs from the exhibition Day of Change show the moment the country vanished.
In the days leading up to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Gerald Zörner was travelling as a street photographer in the cities of Central and Eastern Europe. Always in search of images that capture a crucial moment without inspiring pathos of any kind, Zörner photographs objectively, but in close proximity to the people he depicts. This was the manner in which he followed the events surrounding the political upheaval in Berlin: the hunger strikes in the Gethsemane Church, the demonstrations on the part of the East German opposition, and not least the utter helplessness on the part of the country’s police force on the regime’s final day.
To preserve his anonymity, Gerald Zörner published his work under the pseudonym Gezett, which he kept. Today, he runs a photo studio not far from the Schöneberg City Hall, at Babelsberger Straße 40/41.