February 1990, comissioned by Philip Morris, Huma Rosentalski travelled through the still existing GDR.

“The American Board wants to get an image of the situation.”

The travel guide assigned to him, a former refugee from the GDR, has to serve too many west contacts to find the time to show the photographer his dissolving country. Gold rush.
He hands Rosentalski over to his assistant and with him and the slogan “when reunification comes” a journey begins – before the first free elections and before Helmut Kohl’s blooming lanscapes.

Meetings with people who wrote history, as actors or extras. A wealth of enthusiasm and solidarity, and of greenness. Without preparation for the demands of capitalism. Shortly the “round table” was hoping to reform the GDR. Too late. The dices had fallen.

Rosentalski’s photographs where sent to the US and disappeared.

Left over in the photographer’s archive stayed a set of anonymous portraits.

28 × 40 cm, 40 pages, digital printed, edition of 500.

Edited by Martin Borst and Johannes Tolk, Berlin, 2020.

Available at Ofr. Paris, La librairie du Palais and Yvon Lambert

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