‘Street Photography At The End Of The 80s’ by Henk Kosche

A rediscovered archive of East Germany before the fall

All About Photo presents Street Photography At The End Of The 80s, a compelling solo exhibition by German photographer Henk Kosche, curated by Sandrine Hermand-Grisel. On view throughout July 2025 in the online gallery, this exhibition revisits a city—and a society—on the brink of irreversible transformation.

Long forgotten in a cardboard box of 35mm negatives, Kosche’s images were taken in Halle an der Saale, an industrial city in the heart of the former GDR, in the late 1980s. Captured with quiet precision and emotional restraint, these black-and-white photographs offer a rare glimpse into everyday life under East German socialism, just before the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

The city’s visual identity—defined by smoke-belching chimneys, crumbling facades, and a heavy industrial haze—forms a textured backdrop for portraits of daily life, where fatigue and improvisation coexist with subtle expressions of hope. Kosche reflects: “Sometimes the substance of the buildings and the condition of the people seemed to have something in common.”

Now digitized and exhibited for the first time, these images serve as more than historical records. They are poetic meditations on impermanence—fragments of a world fading just as the Marlboro Man and global consumerism begin to take hold.

Street Photography At The End Of The 80s is a quiet but powerful act of remembering. It asks us not only to observe what once was, but to consider what remains when a culture shifts—and what photography alone can still recover.