| During these holidays, the museum of the former legendary ORWO plant in Wolfen, which supplied the whole of Eastern Europe with color photographic film for many decades, is hosting the exhibition “40 Years of Actual Photography in the Everyday Life of the East.” Actual photography is nude photography. As we know, there was no sex under socialism. In the GDR, in the early 80s, meeting the numerous requests of workers, the Politburo of the SED Central Committee adopted a special closed decision regulating the use of nudity in printed publications. In it, the party even welcomed the publication in each illustrated magazine (NBI, Freie Welt, etc.) of no more than one similar photograph. For those for whom this was not enough, the GDR published the magazine Das Magazin, seasoned with a significantly larger portion of erotica. However, getting it in the republic was as difficult as, for example, bananas. This publication, which miraculously survived to this day, became a sponsor of the exhibition in Wolfen. The editors of Das Magazin, who knew as well as anyone that in terms of act photography, citizens of the GDR widely used samizdat, asked them to send photographs from their old photo albums for the exhibition in Wolfen. From the thousands of photographs sent, the editors selected the best 200. They added to the exposition.
Unlike the popular magazine, the once beloved ORWO photographic film (it was hard to find on the Soviet market) did not survive the hardships and hardships of reunification. But it was here in 1936 that the very principle of color photography was invented. The technology for producing color film emulsions at Wolfen was one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Third Reich. At its best, this factory, the largest of its kind, employed 15 thousand people. Now there are about 200 of them, and they are mainly busy with the demolition of industrial premises that have fallen apart over time. |
