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The exhibition 'Progress as a Promise.

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Industrial Photography in Divided Germany' is about photography,

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commissioned by West German industrial companies

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and East German state-owned enterprises.

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In fact this photography was used for representation.

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That means, it was published in brochures, on posters,

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in factory magazines and thus is supposed to show the best sides

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of the company to the outside.

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The exhibition is divided into four themes:

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There is a chapter on the steel industry, the chemical industry,

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on the textile industry and on the automotive industry

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and at the very beginning a prologue on coal mining.

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In each chapter there are two large photos, one from a plant in the GDR

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and one from a company in the Federal Republic of Germany.

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And these photographs are ultimately representative of the industries.

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Surprisingly, there is no big difference between

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photography from the Federal Republic of Germany and the GDR.

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We have noticed that the blast furnace at Thyssen

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looks like the blast furnace in Eisenhüttenstadt.

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The visual language that we find here was handed down,

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but the contextualizations are very different,

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because of course also the ideals of progress,

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which are transported in each case are different.

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In the capitalism of a social market economy, it’s all

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about prosperity and success, and in the GDR, of course, it's more about

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propagating the socialist ideology.

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The photographers we show here in the exhibition,

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are, on the one hand, internal company photographers who work for company magazines

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or for internal documentation.

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On the other hand, there are also external freelance photographers,

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who, for example, have been hired for anniversary magazines

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or special assignments.

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These photographs were ultimately used

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for different things.

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There are trade show brochures, factory magazines,

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recruitment brochures, especially in the GDR, for new workers,

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but also illustrated magazines like the Neue Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung.

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Of course, in a way, they're all posed,

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so they show the normal operations,

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but of course it was often asked, to show

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this handle a little bit more strikingly or to show more

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people than are normally involved in the process,

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to ultimately make photography more accessible.

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The question of what photography means for history

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And what it means to our collection,

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is complicated in the sense that photography is of course

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a medium that first of all transports the illusion very strongly,

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that it shows a situation exactly as it has been.

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So the things that we show here have been done,

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to be shown, not in exhibition, but in the magazine,

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but nevertheless they have all been taken,

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to produce an effect, a visual effect,

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namely to convey something, what these companies,

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these big industries, wanted to show about themselves.

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In this respect, this is a certain medium, that is for as as a museum

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of great interest, the medium of photography,

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because you always have the question,

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in which way the photo shows how it has actually been?

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Or does it rather show the impression of

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how one wanted it to look like at that time.