WHAT DO WE DO?

The exhibition, featuring new series of works as well as historical photographs by 25 photographers from the OSTKREUZ collective, contrasts a love of the image with questions about the role and conditions under which contemporary photography is created: What responsibility do photographers bear today, and through which images can radical social transformations, (geo)political shifts in power and ongoing ecological changes be made visible?

The selected works have been created at a time when conditions of production are changing inexorably, shaking the very foundations of the kind of photography that made OSTKREUZ famous after the fall of the Wall: Participatory observations of current events—which bridge the gap between documentary commitment and artistic expression—and a detached perspective on power are increasingly being lost amidst the radical transformation of traditional media landscapes. And yet it is precisely these series of works that enable understanding, empathy and insights into developmental processes and lived worlds.