A time photographed
Jupp Darchinger: the Fifties and early Sixties. By Klaus Honnef. Excerpt from the book 'Wirtschaftswunder'
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What comes across from Darchinger's photographs, however, is a view of things that does not quite correspond with the one lodged in the memories of those who were just a decade and a half younger. Of the generation of war children. They had shaken with fear under the rain of bombs in the dimly-lit air-raid shelters, they played in the dangerously riven and irresistibly inviting landscapes of the bomb sites, and had undergone in full awareness the hardship, the deprivation, the cold of the postwar period with the black market, the foraging trips to the countryside and mounting gang crime.When a bakery, rarely enough, advertised a batch of highly sought-after white bread, their mother would send them for it, and they would return, to their chagrin, after hours of queueing, with the lumpy yellow corn bread. To many of them, the American soldiers seemed like messengers from a distant fairytale country. Chewing gum, chocolate, tins of spam and the friendly GI's planted in their hearts a deep longing for the land of apparently unlimited possibilities and its civilization. At the end of the Fifties, they were the leaven that caused the dough of American popular culture to rise in the west of Germany. In the years when they were growing up, against the background depicted in Darchinger's photographs, they felt continually restricted in their development by the authoritarian structures of a society fixated on the tried and tested. The double standards of the people with influence and their bigoted efforts to censor everything alienated them further. Their perceptions introduce dark shadows into the vibrant images of the economic miracle. They recognize themselves in Darchinger's photographs as biddable apprentices and smartly dressed students at a dance, making a clumsy attempt to flirt or playing in a band. It was the music, or more precisely the American "negro music", as conservative cultural snobs disparagingly called it, that was the strongest expression of their gradually mounting dissent. Jazz and especially rock 'n' roll supplied the sounds and the rhythms of their non-verbal protest. Most of them were already in employment when the next generation, the "68ers", cast a well and truly dubious light on the phase of reconstruction and the so-called Adenauer era. The 68ers caused Darchinger's world of images, with its particular account of things, to be seen as veiled in a sinister atmosphere, albeit one that resists apprehension. As a result, different subtexts run counter to each other in the photographer's pictures. They are decoded with different insights and consequences according to the standpoint and life experience of each individual. The images remain the same. But the way they are interpreted changes all the time.
Darchinger often photographed the generation of future 68ers, avant la lettre, as it were. Not by chance: he was a father himself. The boys confidently handling their scooters with the balloon tyres, and dressed in leather shorts.
When these low-maintenance breeches were so greasy that they stood up on their own when you took them off, they were just right. The girls playing together with the boys or watching a puppet show.When they got older division according to gender was gaining ground in the state or faith schools and in the grammar schools. Conservative morals demanded preventative measures. A paragraph in the statute book accused even parents of the punishable offence of procuring if they allowed young people under the age of 18 to spend a night together under their roof.
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
Page [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
What comes across from Darchinger's photographs, however, is a view of things that does not quite correspond with the one lodged in the memories of those who were just a decade and a half younger. Of the generation of war children. They had shaken with fear under the rain of bombs in the dimly-lit air-raid shelters, they played in the dangerously riven and irresistibly inviting landscapes of the bomb sites, and had undergone in full awareness the hardship, the deprivation, the cold of the postwar period with the black market, the foraging trips to the countryside and mounting gang crime.When a bakery, rarely enough, advertised a batch of highly sought-after white bread, their mother would send them for it, and they would return, to their chagrin, after hours of queueing, with the lumpy yellow corn bread. To many of them, the American soldiers seemed like messengers from a distant fairytale country. Chewing gum, chocolate, tins of spam and the friendly GI's planted in their hearts a deep longing for the land of apparently unlimited possibilities and its civilization. At the end of the Fifties, they were the leaven that caused the dough of American popular culture to rise in the west of Germany. In the years when they were growing up, against the background depicted in Darchinger's photographs, they felt continually restricted in their development by the authoritarian structures of a society fixated on the tried and tested. The double standards of the people with influence and their bigoted efforts to censor everything alienated them further. Their perceptions introduce dark shadows into the vibrant images of the economic miracle. They recognize themselves in Darchinger's photographs as biddable apprentices and smartly dressed students at a dance, making a clumsy attempt to flirt or playing in a band. It was the music, or more precisely the American "negro music", as conservative cultural snobs disparagingly called it, that was the strongest expression of their gradually mounting dissent. Jazz and especially rock 'n' roll supplied the sounds and the rhythms of their non-verbal protest. Most of them were already in employment when the next generation, the "68ers", cast a well and truly dubious light on the phase of reconstruction and the so-called Adenauer era. The 68ers caused Darchinger's world of images, with its particular account of things, to be seen as veiled in a sinister atmosphere, albeit one that resists apprehension. As a result, different subtexts run counter to each other in the photographer's pictures. They are decoded with different insights and consequences according to the standpoint and life experience of each individual. The images remain the same. But the way they are interpreted changes all the time.
Darchinger often photographed the generation of future 68ers, avant la lettre, as it were. Not by chance: he was a father himself. The boys confidently handling their scooters with the balloon tyres, and dressed in leather shorts.
When these low-maintenance breeches were so greasy that they stood up on their own when you took them off, they were just right. The girls playing together with the boys or watching a puppet show.When they got older division according to gender was gaining ground in the state or faith schools and in the grammar schools. Conservative morals demanded preventative measures. A paragraph in the statute book accused even parents of the punishable offence of procuring if they allowed young people under the age of 18 to spend a night together under their roof.
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Josef Heinrich Darchinger, Wirtschaftswunder
Hardcover, slipcase, 39.6 x 33 cm (15.6 x 13 in.), 290 pages
$ 600.00
$ 600.00
Rare color photographs of the German "economic miracle." Limited to 1,000 copies, each numbered and signed by J. H. Darchinger and containing the signed color photograph Reichstag, Berlin, 1958
A sign, a few posts, a few metres of barbed wire: the inner-German border between West and East Germany on the Baltic shore in Travemünde.
Photo (c) Josef Darchinger, 1959
For a Groschen (10 pfennigs) you can buy a bit of heaven: a roll of five caramel toffees. Wonderfully sticky, it's hard not to chew them and unfortunately they can pull out fillings and loose teeth. Bonn 1955
Photo (c) Josef Darchinger