Manfred Paul: Paris 1988

In 1988 Manfred Paul was invited to go on a six-week trip to study in Paris. At the time, this was a rare opportunity for a photographer from East Germany to explore a country on the other side of the Iron Curtain. He managed to borrow a Leica M3 from one of the staff at the French Cultural Centre in Berlin; looking through the viewfinder of this camera gave him a special experience of Paris, which changed his way of seeing and had a lasting effect on his photography.

The sixty-five pictures comprising Paris 1988 are not concerned with the tourist version of Paris, nor are they a social documentary exploration: rather, they are a rehearsal for a postmodernist visual practice. Paul sets up an opposition between the fragment and the long shot; instead of watching out for the decisive moment, he is interested in the peripheral aspects of an event. Sur-faces, shop windows, the everyday tokens and material qualities of city life—impressions that no longer piece themselves together into a complete image, but which convey the atmosphere of the time: L’air de Paris.

Manfred Paul has lived and worked in East Berlin since 1968. He was one of the most important exponents of auteur photography in the GDR.