SIGNED; Gundula Schulze Eldowy, - Der grosse und der kleine Schritt ("The big and the little step", MINT CONDITION, SHRINK-WRAPPED). - 2012

“The final documentation of the unofficial GDR.”
(Tobias Timm, Die ZEIT, December 8, 2011)

“Gundula Schulze photographed there completely without fear, in places where others would not have been allowed or would not have dared to do so.”
(Ulf Erdmann Ziegler, Blau Kunstmagazin, No. 5, October 2015)

“Schulze Eldowy is a merciless photographer; her truth is bitter. She shows a country in dissolution, shows cracked walls, gloomy workplaces, shows it relentlessly and drastically, creates images of scarred people that hardly leave one’s mind, because death inhabits them. This taboo-free, oppressive book is proof of what photography can still accomplish today: formulating an all-encompassing critique of conditions, of the world in which we live.”
(Marc Peschke, Photoscala.de, December 29, 2011)

“Schulze Eldowy never submitted an application to leave the country. In 1986 she chose the other path to escape pressure and harassment: the provinces, to Dresden. Once more the photographer wanted to be very close; it became a series about a country in dissolution.”
(Kito Nedo, Art. Das Kunstmagazin, January 2012)

“The series The Big Step and the Small Step from the final years of the GDR refuses distance. Some of the motifs are merciless, in color and thus far closer than black-and-white. Today, one can see in the ‘then’ that something was coming to an end.”
(Conrad Menzel, Der Freitag, December 18, 2011)

BREATH-TAKING PHOTOBOOK by Gundula Schulze Eldowy, one the most important photographers from East Germany - in BRANDNEW CONDITION.

This book was originally published in conjunction with the exhibition "Gundula Schulze Eldowy - Die frühen Jahre" at "C/O Berlin-International Forum Visual Dialogues" from 9th of December 2011 to 26th of February 2012.

Signed by the artist.
Signatures by this artist are very scarce.
I GUARANTEE THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE SIGNATURE.

New, mint, unread.
Still originally shrink-wrapped in publisher's plastic foil; only opened once for signature.
COLLECTOR'S COPY.

Gundula Schulze Eldowy (born 1954 in Erfurt) is a German photographer. In addition to her photographic and film work, she has created stories, poems, essays, sound collages and songs.
The artistic importance of her photography has been compared to that of Diane Arbus.

THIS IS THE VERY FIRST PHOTOBOOK AUCTION ON CATAWIKI - dedicated entirely to the world of the former "DDR"/"GDR" ("GERMAN DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC" or "EAST GERMANY") which existed from 1949 to 1990.

Still largely undiscovered and unexplored, this field offers a wealth of fascinating discoveries for collectors.
5Uhr30.com presents exceptional works by renowned and emerging artists, survey works, compelling monographs, as well as extraordinarily rare small vintage catalogues, vintage children’s books and vintage factory photobooks; signed publications, posters, and much more.

"The theme of this photo book without taboos is the alienation of man in modern civilization. The crisis in GDR society in the eighties can be seen as the social backdrop. Gundula Schulze Eldowy shows us mankind as being from the outset a suffering and threatened entity, which is further hindered from finding its true self by the restraints and rules of society, and which exerts violence. There are also lighter moments from life which set the necessary counterpoint, but these are rare upon this walk through Hades, which takes us from the delivery room, the hospital and elderly retirement home, through the factory shop floor and slaughterhouse, to the dancing school and the opera ball. In all the exterior decay of the cities corresponds to the observed reification of the people portrayed and the individual's yearnings for inner transformation with the political self-liberation of GDR society."
(from the publisher)

Like always we guarantee detailed and accurate descriptions, 100% transport protection, 100% transport insurance, and of course, combined shipping - worldwide.

MAKE SURE YOU DON'T MISS THIS UNIQUE AUCTION.
Brought to you exclusively by 5Uhr30.com, Cologne, Germany.

Lehmstedt Verlag, Leipzig. 2012.

Hardcover with dustjacket. 245 x 275 mm. 288 pages. 81 photos. Photos: Gundula Schulze Eldowy. Edited by Mathias Bertram and Felix Hoffmann. Book design: Mathias Bertram, Berlin. Translation: Christopher Haley Simpson. Printing and binding: Bosch-Druck, Ergolding. Text in German.

Great photobook in perfect condition - signed by the artist.

“Her photographic series are in part hyperrealistic, in part committed to a poetry of lostness that is metaphysical and existentialist in nature, grounded in a critique of civilization. She tells of fragile bodily existence within a world of objects that is not a home.”
(Klaus Rek, Die Horen, 2014, No. 256)

“One may not share some of the views expressed by the artist in the foreword, but her images inevitably burn themselves into the viewer’s memory.”
(F.F. dabei, No. 5, 2012)

“The cycle plunges into a world of suffering, death, and illness that is difficult to endure, taboo-free and photographed with drastic clarity – but also into life and birth. As shameless as the images may initially appear, they affect the viewer all the more deeply and lastingly. Schulze Eldowy’s art springs directly from suffering, from the gutter, from the neighborhood, and thus appears timeless and current.”
(Tobias Riegel, Neues Deutschland, January 31, 2012)

“Vehement and uncompromising, she inscribes herself into the history of photography in both East and West Germany with drastic verism; this work [The Big Step and the Small Step] has secured her a singular position to this day. The impact of these images remains undiminished even after two or three decades, under changed political conditions.”
(Carolin Förster, Photonews 2/2012)

“It is the barely bearable horrors of human existence that she approaches in the 1980s and 1990s with unprecedented lack of distance. This taboo-free interest in crisis-ridden extreme situations and in those people labeled ‘asocial’ in the GDR may have been one-sided. But the aesthetic counterpart – the depiction of a satisfied, carefree life in the GDR – was ultimately provided by state propaganda.”
(Brigitte Preissler, Prenzlauer Berg Nachrichten, January 27, 2012)

“The story Gundula Schulze Eldowy tells is that of the tormented creature, whose coordinates are hardness, violence, and loneliness. She herself radiates none of this – not even today.”
(Silke Hohmann, Monopol. Magazin für Kunst und Leben, February 2012)

“It is precisely this series of images that displays moments of existential borderline experience in a deeply unsettling way. The play with analogies – death and rebirth as eternal cycles of renewal – is driven to the extreme.”
(Andrea Backhaus, Die Welt, January 9, 2012)

“Images without filters. And free of kitsch. Which means: free of ideological or obtrusively artistic calculation.”
(Christian Eger, Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, December 28, 2011)

“No one else in Germany, East or West, produces such relentlessly unsparing images. They literally burrow into your mind. The intensity is sometimes almost unbearable, because these photographs are not only about a dying system, but about death and life itself. The power of these images is as undiminished as their relevance.”
(Achim Drucks, taz, December 14, 2011)

“What is conveyed here is a transformed self-understanding: that of unsettled people who seem to be turning away from constraints and rules. Or trying to come to terms with them.”
(Janina Fleischer, Leipziger Volkszeitung, December 14, 2011)

“These images skewer, they are drastic, shrill, overheated, and expose the intolerabilities of a world on the verge of bursting.”
(Karin Schulze, Spiegel Online, December 13, 2011)

“The book shows what a critical photographer captures when she refuses to accept the taboos of the modern world. And what in the impressive black-and-white photographs sometimes still appears quiet, restrained, and as if from another century, far behind the mountains, gains an oppressive closeness and immediacy in color.”
(Ralf Julke, Leipziger Internetzeitung, December 11, 2011)

“The artist Gundula Schulze Eldowy is authentic in a striking sense. She does not care about … categories, morality, or canon.”
(Anne Hahn, Kiez-Ticker, December 8, 2011)

“Every photographer is, mind you, a voyeur. But Gundula Schulze has never practiced her profession at others’ expense. The people on the other side of her lens always remain subjects. Worthy of being depicted.”
(Peter von Becker, Tagesspiegel, December 8, 2011)

“While her photographs are social-critical documents on the first level, on another they concern nothing less than the condition of the world.”
(Stefanie Dörre, TIP Berlin, December 7, 2011)

“This is the great secret of this photographer: that she repeatedly succeeds in creating this sense of intimacy. Never are people eavesdropped on, secretly observed, or degraded into objects of an interesting composition. Only someone who lives among those she photographs, who truly is one of them, photographs this way. Now this astonishingly vibrant photographic art returns to the scene of the crime.”
(Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung)

"At the age of fifteen, Schulze Eldowy travelled to Prague and Pilsen and was influenced by the Prague Spring. Between 1972 and 1982 she undertook extensive journeys across Eastern Europe. In 1972 she moved to East Berlin. From 1979 to 1984 she attended the Academy of Fine Arts (School of Visual Arts) in Leipzig for photography, studying with Horst Thorau. Her photographs from the 1970s and 1980s are considered some of the most important visual testimonies to East German daily life. Many of her photographs capture the private lives of others with a direct and unsparing gaze, including the living conditions of those living on the margins of society. She is known to capture everyday life through intimate exchange with her subjects. By documenting counterculture as well as elderly and disabled members of the community, she called to attention those that had been disregarded by official media, which for the most part was with idealized images of those benefiting from socialist society.
From 1977 to 1990, Schulze Eldowy worked on various photo series, which occasionally earned disapproval from the authorities. Among those received negatively were her nude portraits, which she chose to photograph in their homes in order to highlight their status in society and also retain their individuality. During this period, she created the black and white cycles Berlin on a Dog's Night, Work, Nude Portraits, Tamerlan, Street Scene, The Wind Fills Itself with Water, and two color cycles The Big and the Little Step, and The Devil Take the Hindmost. Despite both solo and group exhibition opportunities and inclusion in photography journals, the Stasi still attempted to impede her practice due to the opinion that her work negatively portrayed socialist society.
In 1985 she met American photographer Robert Frank, who encouraged her and invited her to go to New York in 1990, where she lived from 1990 to 1993. During this time she was included in the New Photography 8 exhibition at MoMA. Starting with her time in New York, Schulze Eldowy increasingly turned to poetry, which, for her, represents "the language of the spirit.
She continued to travel and live in different countries across the world: Italy (1991), Egypt (1993–2000), Japan (1996/97), Moscow (1997), Turkey (1997) and finally in Peru and Bolivia in the 2000s. During her time in Egypt, she discovered a previously unknown shaft in the west wall of the Queen's Chamber of the Great Pyramid. She used aerial photography to find what she claims is the location of the legendary Hall of Records. In a series of sound works entitled "Songs/Cheops-Pyramide" she recited poems, chants, and songs in the pyramid chambers.
In 2010 she became a member of the Saxon Academy of the Arts
and in 2019 she became a member of the Academy of Arts, Berlin. In 1996 she was awarded the Higashikawa Prize. Schulze Eldowy lives in Berlin and Peru.
(Wikipedia)