German Art World

No other agency in Germany that is run independently by photographers enjoys such a good reputation and is as successful as Ostkreuz in Berlin. With photojournalism that is as eagle-eyed as it is sensitive, ambitious volumes of photographs, and exhibitions focusing on the status quo of our global society, the agency has managed to establish itself, so to speak, as a “public eye”. This article looks back over the 20-year history and ahead to the future prospects of the photographers’ collective.


It is hard to believe, but the idea to found the Ostkreuz photography agency was born in the Élysée Palace in Paris, of all places, following the fall of the Berlin Wall. In the spring of 1990, President Mitterand had invited around 200 artists of the former GDR (East Germany), among them seven of the later founding members of the agency. Finding themselves experiencing somewhat conflicting emotions on account of the unfamiliarly heady atmosphere of celebration on the one hand and the uncertain future in a free market economy on the other, they decided to show some initiative. General manager Werner Mahler remembers everything as if it were just yesterday: “We decided there and then to give the agency thing a try. We may be walking along a tightrope, with an abyss below us to the right and left, but we are keeping our balance beautifully.”

Their goal, he explains, was not only to continue to earn a living as independent photographers in a new economic system, but also to be able to talk about photography on a theoretical level. The idea proved to be a resounding success: today, 20 years on, Ostkreuz is the most renowned agency run independently by photographers.

Photography at the Postfuhramt

Today, “Ostkreuz: Agency of Photographers” – to give it its full name – has 18 members, has won numerous prizes for its photojournalism and, in addition to a series of exhibitions, has also published high quality volumes of photography such as the atmospheric journey through 24 h Berlin (2009). Recently, the Ostkreuz collective staged yet another exhibition that was very well-received by critics.

“The City – Becoming and Decaying” was the title of the exhibition of journalistic photographs and essays presented by C/O gallery at the Postfuhramt in Berlin, a show that drifted into all the four corners of the world. Here, in the photographic cycles depicting the fractures and fictions of today’s urban landscapes, that which defines the agency’s hidden agenda became symptomatically visible. With an eye that is focused on social phenomena, Ostkreuz searches for some sort of respect for the object, authenticity, the photographer’s own signature, sensitivity, an engagement with human beings, and an attitude towards time.

Time and money

Not that the agency, which initially was also regarded to some extent as a partnership of convenience, ever became a roaring financial success over the years. Admittedly, the agency may have led to the office in Greifswalder Strasse landing considerably more commissions, yet exhibitions like the one at the Postfuhramt entail a great deal of both time and money. A project of this type can take around three years, from concept and logistics to set-up and framing.

Each of the agency’s members not only has shares in the private limited company, but also takes part in the decisions. The fees for freelance photographers have not exactly risen over the years – on the contrary. Because hardly any publishers can afford to commission complex, month-long research any more, the good old days of photojournalism are over in any case. This is even felt by the Magnum agency with its global operations; in the last few years, it has lost several of its leading wartime photographers. Founded in New York in 1947, Magnum was once the great role model for Ostkreuz. War photographers, however, are just as absent from the ranks of the Berlin agency as advertising and fashion photographers.

Style and regime

Sibylle Bergemann, on the other hand – one of the “magnificent seven” of the founding years – is a prominent exception. With her wonderfully sensitive black-and-white images for the East German fashion magazine Sibylle, she modestly illustrated just how stylishly one could dress even under the austere conditions of the GDR regime. Recently, Bergemann photographed fashion in Dakar from an ethnic viewpoint.

Looking ahead to the future with optimism

Despite the paradigm shift in the profession – brought about not least by the advent of digital photography – the team at Ostkreuz is looking ahead to the future with optimism. They seem themselves as a kind of “l'œil public” (“public eye”). The collective has become visibly younger and larger and now, with a third of its current members being female, the proportion of women is also considerably greater than it was in the early years. As young photographer Annette Hauschild puts it: “In future, we would like to set ourselves up more as our own clients and use magazines only as secondary outlets for our work.”

If that is achieved, some sort of productive conflict would also remain: the less one opens oneself up to commercial interests as a freelance photographer, the more one is reliant on generating sponsorship money. An ambitious project with Greenpeace is currently in the pipeline, though the details are as yet confidential. This is another organization that is more interested in honour than financial reward.