A "Couple" of Images

By the time Ute and Werner Mahler began working on their first joint project in 2009, they had already been together as a couple for more than 40 years. Each had enjoyed an impressive career as a photographer, not only in former East Germany, where they had grown up, but also in the years following German reunification. Both had studied photography in Leipzig and worked as freelance photographers on assignments as well as personal projects. Together with five other renowned East German photographers, they founded the highly acclaimed Ostkreuz photography agency in 1990. For decades, they had assisted each other whenever one had a job, but it was not until their work on their self-chosen project “Mona Lisas of the Suburbs” that it evolved into a joint undertaking and a new form of cooperation.

They have since produced numerous photographic series as a team, including “Small Town”, referring to German communities with between 2,000 and 20,000 inhabitants. Many of these have been struggling for years with a massive exodus of the population as more and more people move to larger conurbations where they can find work, culture and a well-developed infrastructure. The Mahlers travelled around Germany to discover what life in such dwindling communities feels like, especially for young people. Their pictures fulfil many clichés associated with small towns: architectural eyesores, transgressions of urban planning, small-mindedness, and a feeling of desolation. However, their intention in photographing these places and their residents was not to expose them, but to explore a phenomenon and search for signs of hope.

At first glance, the large-format pictures in the series “Strange Days”, with brightly coloured, almost abstract and above all enigmatic motifs, are not typical of the Mahlers’ photographic style. In their work, they frequently chanced upon constellations that seemed so surreal that they stuck in their minds for a long time. As a result, they resolved to purposely seek out such unusual phenomena and photograph them. However, their “expeditions” did not take them to faraway lands, but above all through the nearby state of Brandenburg. Here they discovered, for example, in a container at a tree nursery an extremely bizarre-looking group of trees, waiting to be transported away. Or in the dining room of a deserted Russian army camp a mural with paint flaking off it whose state of decay reveals a unique beauty.

In their long-term projects, Ute and Werner Mahler concern themselves in various ways with the relationship between human beings and nature. Their unflagging curiosity and their exceptional and perceptive attention to detail allow them to find startling motifs in places where most people would not even think to look: in their immediate environment.