From July 01, 2025 to July 31, 2025
A small cardboard box with strips of 35mm negatives has been with me for almost 40 years now. A darkroom, which would be necessary to put these pictures on paper, has gone out of fashion over the years. In addition, piles of new pictures have piled up on new storage media. But at some point the past catches up with you, they say, and the little box revealed its little treasures.
Halle an der Saale, where I studied a few years before the Wall came down, had a very special charm. This city was located in the heart of the industrial region of the former GDR. The numerous chimneys of the tenements, chemical plants and coal-fired power stations smoked incessantly and covered the region with a very particular texture. Life was full of inspiration, a lot of improvisation, but also resignation - in short, everything that goes with everyday life in a big city. But sometimes the substance of the buildings and the condition of the people seemed to have something in common, and I tried to capture this impression on film..
What would happen to the city, the country and the people in the following years was completely unpredictable at the time of the photo shoot. In the photographs you can see the atmosphere of those years one last time, before the Marlboro Man and the curved typography of a soft drink manufacturer took over the city’s defining image.
Henk Kosche is a product designer and photographer who lives in the heart of Germany, the Ruhr region.
In his work as a product designer, observing human activities is an important part of thinking about solutions through design. This includes understanding the needs of the people involved, but also the interaction in which their decisions are made.
Photography can play an important role here, and over the years he developed a deep passion for this subject. Unlike words, a picture can deliver a dense, emotional impression and a personal statement within seconds. A good photograph is a point of view frozen in time.
