Lost Places Photographer Documents Ruins of East Berlin

August 2, 2012 by desertrose 

German artist Sarah Schönefeld was 10 years old when the Berlin Wall came down. In the two decades since, the buildings where she spent her childhood in East Berlin began slowly disappearing. Deeply affected by the process, Schönefeld revisited the places of her past over time with a camera to document the abandoned buildings and ruins. This served as the inspiration for a major photo series by the artist, an impressive documentation of dilapidation and loss. Her photographs often deal with issues surrouding memory. Some of her work is currently featured in a major Hamburg exhibition, “Lost Places. Sites of Photography.”

 

Sarah Schönfeld

After the Berlin Wall came down almost 23 years ago, many neighborhoods in the former East Germany began falling into disrepair. Artist and photographer Sarah Schönfeld, who grew up in the East Berlin district of Lichtenberg, describes how she began to document the decline in photos — partly as a way of saying goodbye to the past.

A glimpse at the past: When Schönfeld returned to her former school in Berlin’s Lichtenberg district as an adult in 2005, she found a building that had fallen into disrepair. There is little to suggest in this photo that the room was once used as a gymnasium.

Sarah Schönfeld

Schönfeld has sought to suppress some memories from her school years that confused her as a child. Although she was one of the brightest pupils during her first and second years at school, her achivements were never recognized on a wall dedicated to the best students because she wasn’t a member of the official, Communist Party-endorsed youth organization.

Sarah Schönfeld

A concrete desert: The Palace of the Republic, East Germany’s former parliament building, also features in Schönfeld’s work. The artist used to attend children’s concerts in the building, which was home to the Communist Party’s rubber-stamp legislature. She recalls being impressed by the glamorous people and the carpets in the events hall, which was mockingly also referred to as “Erich’s Lampenladen,” or Erich’s lamp store, a reference to former East German leader Erich Honecker and the scores of lamps that hung from the ceiling.
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