Fotografie

In the organizer's words:

Wolf Grünke (1926-1997)
Lutz Grünke

First of all - the expectation of a documentation of life in the GDR and in united Germany is not fulfilled. The selection of father and son, Wolf and Lutz Grünke, for the gallery of the Kunstverein zu Rostock are subjective snapshots of reality.
Wolf Grünke, born in 1927, is one of the best-known representatives of amateur photography in the GDR, starting in the 1950s in what was then the district of Rostock. The "fotoclub binz", which he founded, became internationally renowned, he was the initiator of the district photo exhibitions and, last but not least, the founder of the "ifo-scanbaltic" photo biennial of the countries bordering the Baltic Sea. A teacher by profession, he was surrounded by reality, which interested him photographically. People, landscapes, work, situations at school were his motifs. His photographs were shown and awarded nationally and internationally, and in the 1960s he received the AFIAP title from the Fédération Internationale de l'Art Photographique.
His photography for the regional press was mostly a reflection of apparent social progress. In addition, motifs, seen almost incidentally, with now iconic value. When looking through Wolf Grünke's huge archive, these surprising works emerge alongside the negatives of photographic commissions with great intensity due to the time gap. The apparent casualness, the normality of his surroundings - the often-elaborate "world outside his door", that was his canon.
He experienced the appreciation of his photography in 1985, when he was one of the two "amateur" photographers invited to the exhibition "Early Pictures", the most important retrospective of photography in the GDR after 1945.
Wolf Grünke was active as a photographer until his death in 1997, but withdrew from commissioned photography and realized his own projects.
Lutz Grünke, the son, had early contact with photography through his father and the "fotoclub binz". He studied civil engineering and worked for several years with Ulrich Müther, the master shell builder in Binz. In addition to his work, he had to document processes and buildings photographically. From 1986, when he was accepted into the GDR Association of Visual Artists, he was able to work freelance. Christoph Tannert wrote about his photographs, especially from the late 1980s: "... in retrospect, these images appear almost as evidence of a social climate that melancholically and triumphantly surrendered to hopelessness." The portraits, mostly in the surroundings, are thematically accompanied by working spaces, urban irritations, situations and seemingly deserted areas.
He is still moved today by landscapes that are poor or empty of people: "... Grünke's photographs enable this existential encounter between the individual and the space in which they can move by depicting not the people themselves, but only the traces of their activity...", says Susanne Burmester.
While "places by the sea" were once to be found on the Baltic Sea, other seas have since been added, together with places on the respective coasts. Many works are architecturally austere and have a pronounced pictorial stability. For all his urge to travel further afield, Lutz Grünke, who was born in Binz, always remains connected to the places on his home island of Rügen.
The two photographers' different approaches to the photographic object allow for exciting comparisons in this exhibition, which is not only characterized by the distance of decades. Together with the reportage-like photographs, these are series of images that convey both temporal and social aspects.
In this way, the two perspectives remain on an equal footing and allow the viewer, despite some irony, to engage intensively with a seemingly familiar reality.