Use Restrictions

There are no restrictions on personal use. Permission to publish material from "Scenes from Behind the Wall: Images of East Germany, 1989/90" exhibit collection must be obtained from Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries.

Access Restrictions

There are no access restrictions.

Preferred Citation

"Scenes from Behind the Wall: Images of East Germany, 1989/90" exhibit collection, C0235, Special Collections and Archives, George Mason University Libraries.

Acquisition Information

Purchased by Special Collections and Archives on June 21, 2013.

Processing Information

Processing completed by Greta Kuriger Suiter in August 2013. EAD markup completed by Greta Kuriger Suiter in August 2013.

Biographical Information

Page Chichester was born in New Jersey in 1959 and grew up in rural Culpeper, Virginia. He earned a bachelor's degree in English and a master's degree from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. After a two-year stint as photo editor at a wildlife-conservation magazine in Washington, D.C., he spent five years in West Germany, where he worked as a freelance photographer. He returned to Washington, D.C., in 1990 to work as a photojournalist for the National Audubon Society's television productions department, photographing four books including one on the African elephant. He then became editor of Virginia magazine, formerly Virginia Southwest. He freelanced in Roanoke, Virginia, for several years before moving to Bonn, Germany, with his family. The tides of change have swept them to Berlin, and today, Chichester is part of the subcontracted photography crew on various cruise ships. Chichester's photography has appeared in museum and galleries in Athens, Berlin, Bonn, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, as well as in state, regional, and national publications.

Helmut Brinkmann was born in 1951 in Duisburg, part of the coal-mining region (Ruhr Pot) of the former West Germany. He has been a professional photographer since 1979. In addition to his commercial, portrait, and architectural photography, he has exhibited numerous projects in Duisburg, Hamburg, Bonn, Greece, and Spain. In 1972 Brinkmann won the prestigious Bundesfotopreis (National Photo Award). A series of his hand-colored postcards was published as a book, Verwandlungen (Changes), by one of Germany's foremost art publishers, DuMont Verlag. He was among the photographers chosen for the 1991 exhibit Five Bonn Photographers, is a member of the Bundesverband Bildender Künstler (National Assn. of Artists) and is listed in the Bonn Artists Directory. His work has been published in Stern, Die Welt, and other major magazines and newspapers, and he has taught photography for several years in high schools in and around Bonn. Brinkmann has traveled extensively through the former East Germany since 1989.

Biographical information is from the exhibition catalog: Chichester, Page and Helmut Brinkmann. Scenes from Behind the Wall: Images of East Germany, 1989/90. Floyd, Virginia: The Jacksonville Center for the Arts, 2012.

Scope and Content

This collection consists of 53 framed photographs and supporting documentation for the exhibit "Scenes from Behind the Wall: Images of East Germany, 1989/90" that was shown throughout Virginia as part of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts Statewide Exhibition Program from 1995 through 2009. Some of the locations the exhibit traveled to include: Roanoke College, Washington (DC) Center for Photography, Lynchburg Fine Arts Center, and the Armory Gallery at Virginia Tech University. The exhibit was also shown at the Jacksonville Center for the Arts in Floyd, Virginia, in February 2012.

Series 1 includes the framed prints and exhibition labels and is in original order. All prints are black and white and framed (with frame 30x40 inches).

Series 2 consists of correspondence about exhibitions of the photographs, handwritten notes in German, German magazines, press clippings, and smaller prints and negatives. In addition to the catalog, photographs from the exhibit were published in KulturPolitik and FotoScene magazines in Germany, as well as various newspapers in Virginia. Among the documentary material that comes with the exhibit are copies of the German GEO and Stern special-editions on the fall of the wall from 1990, and a list of all the showplaces in Virginia. This series is arranged alphabetically by folder title.

Arrangement

This collection is divided into two series.

Related Material

Special Collections and Archives holds a large collection of posters that document the history of East Germany from the 1940s through the first elections in the 1990s. In addition, Special Collections and Archives also holds the Kuratorium Unteilbares Deutschland (KUD) photograph collection that consists of photographs that document the activities of the KUD, a West German organization that campaigned for reunification.

Index Terms

Persons:

• Brinkmann, Helmut.
• Chichester, Page.

Geographical Names:

• Germany (East)--Photographs.

Document Types:

• Photographs.