BERLIN.- From 8 November 2019, the Akademie der Künste on Pariser Platz presents the photography of Helga Paris (born 1938) from the period of 1968 until 2011. Featuring approx. 275 works, including many individual images and series on view for the first time, it is her most comprehensive exhibition to date. Excerpts from the series Leipzig, Hauptbahnhof (1981/82), Moskau (1991/92) and Mein Alex (2011), among others, are being exhibited for the first time.

The series Leipzig, Hauptbahnhof (1981/82) captures the microcosm of a train station in a city rich in tradition and frequented for its trade fairs; the result is a profound and multifaceted portrait of society. Helga Paris took photographs on the platforms, in the hall, in the restaurant and its kitchen, of travellers waiting and hurrying, and of the people who work at these places. They are silent, precise observations of everyday life, always saturated with the melancholy of an unredeemed promise of cosmopolitanism.

Moskau (1991/92) features intense, surreal street scenes taken during those years of personal uncertainty caused by the political situation. In this series, Helga Paris’s imagery is steeped in seemingly unreal but very tangible absurdity. As with her work in Leipzig, she calls up an array of references – from the burning palaces of the revolution and the utopian promise of the post-revolutionary period to Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita – and the arrival of Coca-Cola.

Mein Alex (2011) is Helga Paris’s most recent series. These ten photographs describe a kind of phenomenological experience of the square Alexanderplatz. Indeed, it is about the timeless experience of a place profoundly familiar to her, based on a bodily memory.

An exhibition of the Akademie der Künste in cooperation with ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen). Part of "30th Anniversary of the Peaceful Revolution – Fall of the Berlin Wall" (30 Jahre Friedliche Revolution – Mauerfall), a comprehensive project of Kulturprojekte Berlin GmbH. With the kind support of the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach-Stiftung, which has enabled the cataloguing of the living legacy and the production of new prints from three unpublished series. Helke Misselwitz’s documentary film triptych on the life and work of Helga Paris was made possible with funding from the DEFA Foundation and the Film University Babelsberg Konrad Wolf.