Tucked away in a small cardboard box, a collection of 35mm negatives sat untouched for nearly four decades. For photographer Henk Kosche, these forgotten strips of film—once destined for the darkroom—became time capsules of a world on the brink of profound transformation. With analog processes fading into memory and digital archives multiplying, the box might have remained closed. But as Kosche puts it, “At some point, the past catches up with you.” Inside, he found photographic treasures that now form the heart of his latest exhibition: Street Photography at the End of the '80s.
The images, taken in Halle an der Saale, were captured in the final years of the German Democratic Republic (GDR). At the time, Kosche was a student living in the city—an industrial hub marked by coal-fired power plants, chemical factories, and the thick smoke that settled over the tenements. It was a place of contradiction: full of creative energy and makeshift solutions, but also steeped in fatigue and resignation.
There was something about the texture of life there, Kosche recalls, as if the buildings and the people were weathering the same long storm. His black-and-white photographs reflect that tension—stark, unfiltered glimpses of urban life as it once was, suspended in the quiet before seismic political change.
Family At The Window, March 1989 © Henk Kosche
Kosche's lens captured not just architecture and street scenes, but the unspoken mood of a country at a historical crossroads. No one in those frames could have predicted what was to come—the fall of the Berlin Wall, reunification, or the cultural saturation that would follow. The Marlboro Man, the bold curves of American soft drink logos, and other Western symbols would soon replace the visual language of the East.
Now, in these reemerging images, viewers are invited to revisit a city and a moment before that shift—before globalization transformed the skyline and the faces within it. Kosche’s photographs are not just documents of a bygone era; they are meditations on memory, change, and the quiet power of photography to preserve what history might otherwise erase.
At The Milcheck, February 1988 © Henk Kosche
Walking The Cat, May 1988 © Henk Kosche
Propaganda Material, May 1987 © Henk Kosche
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.
www.hko.photography
@henkkosche
All about Henk Kosche
Pensioner, February 1988 © Henk Kosche
