Every day, hundreds of thousands of people pass through Alexanderplatz. Located in the center of Berlin, it’s the city’s major public transportation hub, surrounded by offices, shopping malls, hotels and administrative buildings, some from the 1960s, which remain powerful symbols of socialist architecture. At the time, Alexanderplatz was the center of East Berlin.
This gigantic, grey, windswept esplanade has for many years been a safe haven for outsiders. The photographer Göran Gnaudschun (b. 1971), a graduate of the Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst in Leipzig, spent time with the anonymous lives that play out here—Clara, Paule, Sascha, Mel—and came away with the portraits, snapshots and interviews in his series Alexanderplatz.
Once a week from April 2010 to early 2014, Gnaudschun spent the day at Alexanderplatz, staying deep into the night, listening, observing, talking and drinking with its denizens. Sometimes he left his camera in his bag. Then he would go home at night to his family, never forgetting Alexanderplatz and all those who had become a part of him.
It’s difficult to tell how old the people in the pictures are. Gnaudschun says that few of them are over thirty, that the children grow up too fast and the adults age quickly. Many of them are homeless. They’re runaways, punks and dropouts. There’s no work for them now, no place in society. They’ve mostly come from other German cities. Here they feel safe among one another, even if violence is a daily occurrence.
“I rarely see the stories that are told to me in the portraits that I photograph,” says Göran Gnaudschun. “I cannot capture a true picture of the dirt, the violence and the emotional scarring that dictates the lives of many here. (…) I am aware of this, and that is why I also write texts.”
Words play an important role in Alexanderplatz. At the current Haus am Lützowplatz exhibition in Berlin, visitors can listen to the subjects tell the stories of their lives, and placards feature quotations and exchanges recorded by Gnaudschun. These and other texts can also be found in the book published in early 2014 by Fotohof.
EXHIBITION
Göran Gnaudschun « Alexanderplatz »
February 21 – March 30, 2014
Haus am Lützowplatz
Fördererkreis Kulturzentrum Berlin e.V.
Lützowplatz 9
10785 Berlin
BOOK
Göran Gnaudschun « Alexanderplatz »
Graphic Design: Kai-Olaf Hesse, Göran Gnaudschun
2014, stitched binding with dust jacket
20,5 x 27,3 cm, 218 pages, 90 color plates,
edition: 800 German + 400 English
Fotohof edition 2014 – Volume 200 (German) – ISBN 978-3-902993-00-7
Fotohof edition 2014 – Volume 201 (English) – ISBN 978-3-902993-01-4
€ 39
