WATCH: Taking Stock of Power with Regina Mamou
Artist and Art Muse lecturer, Regina Mamou offers a lecture and conversation on East German history via the exhibition Taking Stock of Power: An Other View of the Berlin Wall. The project, produced by way of a collaboration between photographer Arwed Messmer and writer Annett Gröschner, showcases photographs from a previously-classified unexplored archive that the duo accessed.
Taking Stock of Power opened at The Walther Collection Project Space in New York City in 2019, a year that marked the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. When the Wall was erected in 1961, it was a temporary barrier with barbed wire. However, in the mid-1960s, border guards were tasked with photographing the Wall as preparatory images for engineers who were renovating and fortifying the structure. These images, among others, formed the foundation of the project. Messmer and Gröschner, both Germans born in 1964, grew up in a divided Germany on opposite sides of the Wall, Messmer in the West, and Gröschner in the East. Taking Stock of Power was an incredible undertaking of sifting through thousands of photographs to tell a historical story of "an other view."
The Photographic Arts Council Los Angeles makes high-quality arts programming available to everyone. Events are free to PAC members. For more information about PAC membership visit paclosangeles.com. Non-members are encouraged to make a pay-what-you-can contribution. Suggested donation is $10.
Image: Watchtowers, 1966/2016. © Arwed Messmer. Images source: German Federal Archives.