12 - 20 August 2023
Holger Herschel, Grosses Kino
Schifferberg_6, Ahrenshoop (Germany)

From left to right:
Kino International (1990), photography, 33 x 44 cm
Kino Union (1990), photography, 33 x 44 cm
Kino Intimes (1990), photography, 44 x 33 cm

In his series entitled Kino Ost-Berlin 1990 (Cinema East-Berlin 1990), Holger Herschel photographed the cinema landscape in the Eastern part of the city. In his photographs, he deliberately concentrated on the facades and the advertisements, focusing, at the same time, on the architecture of the individual film theatres. His images are a ‘time capsule’ which takes us back, without any nostalgia, to the period of the change of regime in Eastern Germany. As a whole, the series forms a highly valuable documentation on cinemas as cultural institutions. It shows the diversity of a sector which has undergone many changes since and it enables the viewer to discover some highlights of East-Berlin’s post-war, often Bauhaus-inspired architecture.

Holger Herschel (Berlin, 1959), who studied sociology and photography, works as a photographer in the areas of monument conservation, architecture and portrait. He is known for his documentary photographic work through many series and books published over the past years, sometimes in cooperation with scientific institutions. Many of the pictures Herschel made during the period of the collapse of the German Democratic Republic remained untouched for a long time. More than thirty years later, he is now showing them to the public.
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