Deutschland um 1980 - Fotografien aus einem fernen Land

• Exhibition

The years around 1980 were a period of profound upheaval in Germany, which was simultaneously marked by fundamental innovations and great fears about the future. The first Macintosh computer from Apple and the first mobile phone from Motorola came onto the market, and in 1984 it was even possible to send the first emails. Young people listened to the music of the New German Wave, played Pac-Man or tried their hand at the Rubic's Cube. Punks increasingly dominated the city centers, while series such as "Dallas" and "Dynasty" and a new format such as "Wetten, dass..?" attracted millions to their television sets.

This pop and fun culture was contrasted by a general sense of doom, caused by the global arms race, the increasingly visible destruction of the environment and rising unemployment. Germany was divided and East and West were suspicious of each other during the Cold War, despite numerous attempts at rapprochement. 500,000 people demonstrated in Bonn in 1982 against the NATO double-track decision and formed human chains for peace. The Greens were founded as a new party in 1980 and Joschka Fischer became Hesse's environment minister in 1985 wearing sneakers. The Helmut Kohl era began and at the same time a number of new social movements formed with the aim of fundamentally changing society.

Forty years later, this time seems like a distant land, but many developments that originated around 1980 have continued into the present day. The exhibition "Germany around 1980. Photographs from a distant land" shows nine different and concise perspectives on this time with works by Angela Neuke and Barbara Klemm, FC Gundlach, Martin Langer and Ingolf Thiel, Asmus Henkel, Mahmoud Dabdoub and Gerd Danigel. The photographers look at the developments in Germany at the time in highly individual ways: as freelance actors, as reportage photographers commissioned by newspapers and magazines, or as photo artists.

The exhibition was conceived by the LVR Landesmuseum Bonn together with the Deutsche Fotothek Dresden and the FC Gundlach Hamburg Foundation and will be complemented by Hamburg positions in the Altona Museum.

The Altona Museum presents the exhibition together with the FC Gundlach Foundation.