A long-needed retrospective on the great documentarian of East Germany’s working-class culture

German photographer Evelyn Richter (1930-2021) is famed for her portrayal of East Germany in the postwar era, consistently focusing its working-class culture and subjects such as children, workers, artists and musicians (although Richter regarded her documentary work as a counterforce to the politically charged images of the time).
This volume is published on the occasion of the Evelyn Richter exhibition at Kunstpalast Düsseldorf and the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig. It presents the photographer’s main groups of works, from the 1950s to the end of the 1980s, including photographs from Richter’s archive that have only recently become publicly accessible. Throughout, Richter’s images of working-class life are juxtaposed with her reportage work.