Only eight years after Nazi Germany’s surrender, Josef Heinrich Darchinger began his career as a photographer in the Federal Republic of Germany.
Major cities reduced to rubble during the War showed few signs of improvement. But the photographs do not suggest the collapse of civilization, but a country plagued by the fever of reconstruction. Darchinger’s book is a testimony to the so-called German “Economic Miracle” (Wirtschaftswunder).
Himself a soldier and prisoner, it’s as if he were meeting up with childhood friends after a long absence to record the era’s upheavals. Attentive to any sign of revival, he portrays the country as halfway between affluence and poverty, between technological modernism and cultural tradition, and all under the constant threat of the Cold War. He shows us the winners and losers of the Economic Miracle, subjected to the first effects of a consumer society in their homes, at work and in their leisure time.
Josef Heinrich Darchinger was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1925. As a photojournalist, he documented the political and social history of Germany. His photographs have appeared in major German publications such as Der Spiegel and Die Zeit.
Wirtschaftswunder, l’Allemagne après la guerre
September 13 through October 26
Galerie du Lycée Joliot Curie
1 place du Pigeon blanc
02500 Hirson
France
