Abstract
Face to Face: Christian Borchert's Artist Portraits from 1975/76
The Artist Portraits from 1975/76 were Christian Borchert's (1942–2000) first great project as a freelance photographer. For almost two years, Borchert travelled the GDR in order to take the likenesses of about 200 artists (painters, sculptors, writers, composers and film-makers). He finally presented a good number of them in two much-noticed Berlin exhibitions in the fall of 1976. This article investigates the aesthetic, social and political implications of Borchert's complex project, which so far has never been subject to detailed scholarly analysis. It demonstrates how Borchert, working in a totalitarian system, which attempted to socialize, profile and control public discourse, made use of photography as a medium of negotiation between the private and the public, between individual aspirations and official ideals, and between art and politics.
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