I am sure many of these people are dead. That is not what distinguishes the book or what makes it great. Instead, what is challenging is being alive during that part of history when the faces and bodies inhabiting the frames are familiar, enhanced by the glow from a window. Some of their bodies sit at work construed as manual labor in a cautious and tenuous way, and the cold paint-chipped rooms seem reasonably confessional as if I might have spoken to their scaled surfaces in my own life.

Being in this part of history to understand the implications of Berlin on A Dog’s Night (Spector, 2024) does not omit me from ignorance or foster any absolute understanding. Still, it does allow the guillotine of our paths crossing to slice at my heel or eyes or the folds sequestered in the bottom of my brain pan to facilitate a communal feeling of familiarity. There is something uncanny about seeing these images. I feel as though I could fall through the image, and the eyes staring back at me could be relatives, grandparents, lost aunts, and uncles. Though I would be a foreigner to that particular time and geography, it would not take long to understand its mechanisms and wander along the brick-strewn land, collecting thoughts and the odd fragments of history’s darkest century (so far). When I look here and lament, it is from a desire to understand Schulze Eldowy’s…people.

Berlin On A Dog’s Night comprises Gundula Schulze Eldowy’s photographs of East Berlin from 1977 to 1990. Schulze Eldowy is a prolific photographer who has done work in many geographies. However, this work, previously published in 2011 and with this subsequent edition available with 24 new images, reminds viewers of the secret histories crafted during Soviet rule in the former union. There has been a renewed interest in photographers like Schulze Edlowy, Tina Bara, Harold Hauswald, Ulrich Wüst, The Mahlers, and Helga Paris. Each photographer had their interpretation of life in East Germany. For Schulze Eldowy, there are several strands to her work to review. This is likely her most well-known work, and republishing it will continue to pull new enthusiasts into her orbit.

The work presented in this book follows a pattern of gritty black-and-white work that looks at the subject matter of East German citizens’ interior and private lives through a series of nudes and images made in the home and while at work. There are also images of people in the hospice hospital. The clandestine nature of this work feels intimate, is sometimes autobiographical, and might be read as somewhat subversive by Soviet standards. The GDR placed heavy attention on artists like Harold Hauswald, considered a potential subversive. His case is another story altogether. A good book for overviewing this period of German photographic history is Philippe Séclier and Sonia Voss’s book The Freedom Within Us: East German Photography 1980-1989, published by Walther König in 2019. With Schulze Eldowy, the aim is less photojournalistic and more subjective. Her studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB) make sense for her worldview and her ability to take risks in creating such work.

This is not the first book of Schulze Eldowy that I have picked up recently. I stumbled across a book of her work in color titled Der Größe und der kleine Schritt: Fotografien 1982-1990 (2011), a book that presents similarly to Berlin On a Dog’s Night but has an added visceral component that makes it somewhat more shocking, more akin to a study of a Vienna Actionist performance than the adjacent street photography found in this volume. I am still trying to digest it. It is almost violently graphic, but because of this gory realism, a profound sense of humility and humanity pervades the work. I could apply that same thinking here with the final chapter of this book following the last difficult days of two women, one of whom is slowly losing her body to diabetes (I think). Part by part, amputations work their way up her legs until the final picture, in which she stares at the viewer naked, without legs to stand on. It is a brave series of images; perhaps that is an excellent word for the uncompromising work. What has she seen during her life?

Of the grit and the challenging parts of Berlin On a Dog’s Night, it is essential to understand that there is also tenderness between people. Schulze Edowy’s nude studies of people in their flats are pretty endearing and remind one of some of Lee Friedlander’s nudes from around the same time. There is an earnestness to the imagery that suggests proximity and not distance to her subjects. They also feel incredibly natural. In many ways, her flat studies remind me more of the cinema of Rainer Werner Fassbinder than photography itself. Perhaps that is because of the environment, but even Schulze Endowy’s choice of subject feels like it could inhabit the same world.

This is a powerful book, and I am happy to see Spector re-publish this edition. They have a sensitivity for German photography of the period that provides excellent service to the work. There are often great essays in English and German for context that open up discussions around the historical, social, and political conditions in which the work was made. It also gives broader depth to the artist and leaves a legacy different from other books without the bilingual text. I would also note the use of black and white suits this edition. Often, Schulze Eldowy seemed to shoot both color and black and white or used color images to produce black and white photos, but it is not apparent as both examples exist with slight iterations.

In the case of this book, the monochrome offerings tie the moos and feel of Berlin from 1977-1990 together very well, or at least my projection of that timeframe. Schulze Eldowy’s work is getting much-needed re-evaluation from publications like this and in exhibition form. It is refreshing to see such substantial work getting its due. Highly Recommended.

Gundula Schulze Eldowy

Berlin On a Dog’s Night

Spector Books

Original Press Release

Between 1977 and 1990, Gundula Schulze Eldowy roamed East Berlin with her camera: her powerful, direct images capture the long post-war period in the socialist part of the city, the deep scars of the inferno that had engulfed Germany, and the old Berlin milieu with its one-of-a-kind individuals and people living on the fringes, who soon vanished from the face of the city after the fall of the wall. Schulze Eldowy trains her gaze on the existential aspects of life. She looks at the world with a rare combination of sensitivity and a lack of inhibition that is both touching and painful.

The images shown in Berlin on a Dog’s Night constitute Schulze Eldowy’s early work. These pictures brought her international recognition and are now featured in critical photographic collections. The book, which has long been out of print, is now reprinted in a new layout with over thirty additional photographs.

Gundula Schulze Eldowy, b. She was born in 1954 in Erfurt, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB), and began working as a freelance photographer in Berlin in 1984. In the period up until 1990, she produced the black-and-white works Berlin in einer Hundenacht, Arbeit, Aktporträts, Tamerlan, and the two colour cycles Der große und der kleine Schritt and Den letzten beißen die Hunde. In 1990, she embarked on a series of journeys that took her to Egypt (1993–2000), Japan (1996 –97), and, from 2001 on, Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. She lives in Berlin and Peru.

340 pp.
134 black and white illustrations
thread-sewn hardcover

Leipzig April, 2024
ISBN: 9783959058216

Width: 22 cm
Length: 26 cm

Language(s): English

Designer
Lamm & Kirch, Caspar Reuss

Text
Gundula Schulze Eldowy

Photographer
Gundula Schulze Eldowy