GERMANY AROUND 1980
Photographs from a distant land
From 9.10.2024 to 3.3.2025
1980! 44 years later, this time in reunified Germany seems like a distant land, but many developments that originated around 1980 reach right up to the present day. The exhibition "Deutschland um 1980. Fotografien aus einem fernen Land", presented by the Altonaer Museum together with the F.C. Gundlach Foundation, features works by Angela Neuke, Barbara Klemm, Christian von Alvensleben, Martin Langer, Ingolf Thiel, Asmus Henkel, Mahmoud Dabdoub, Gerd Danigel, Hans-Martin Küsters and Wilfried Bauer, showing ten different and concise perspectives on the years between 1975 and 1985. The photographers take a highly individual look at the developments in both parts of Germany at the time: as freelancers, as reportage photographers commissioned by newspapers and magazines or as photo artists. The exhibition highlights political and social issues and events of the time and also looks back at the music, fashion and design of the years around 1980.
In Germany and Europe, the period around 1980 is regarded as a phase of fundamental upheaval: the economic and energy crises of 1973 and 1979, the debate about the limits of growth and environmental destruction shook the Western world. They abruptly ended the dream of an eternal economic miracle. The division of Germany and the world into East and West and the scenario of nuclear war, fueled by the arms race, brought the peace movement onto the scene. This gave rise to a culture of public concern, including demonstrations and protests, which changed issues and decisions. The party landscape in West Germany was given a new look with the founding of The Greens, while the 'spiritual and moral turn' formulated by Helmut Kohl after his election as Federal Chancellor in 1982 was intended to bring about a return to tradition and bourgeois virtues. Many social developments were continued or newly initiated and continue to have an impact to this day, such as the struggle for equality for women, the struggle for self-realization and new lifestyles or the fight for the environment and climate protection. Media phenomena such as the zeitgeist magazines 'Wiener' and 'Tempo' and the licensing of private radio and television stations elevated the importance of youth culture into everyday consciousness, punk and pop, aerobics and Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Adidas and Puma became socially acceptable, even in the GDR. The first Macintosh computer from Apple and the first cell phone from Motorola came onto the market, and from 1984 it was even possible to send the first e-mails. Young people listened to the music of the Neue Deutsche Welle, played Pac-Man or tried their hand at Rubic's Cube.
Many of these phenomena of the 1980s can be found in artistic documentary photography, free street photography or reportage photography commissioned by newspapers and magazines.
GERMANY AROUND 1980
Photographs from a distant land
9.10.2024 - 3.3.2025
Altonaer Museum
Museumsstraße 23
22765 Hamburg
Opening hours: Mon, Wed - Fri 10 am - 5 pm / Tue closed / Sat, Sun 10 am - 6 pm