In 30 years of agency history, OSTKREUZ photographers have regularly taken a stand on social and political current events. In their current exhibition, which the 23 OSTKREUZ members see as a declaration of love for Europe, the collective examines the continent’s present. Personal, social and political aspects of togetherness in Europe are taken into the always critical and at the same time empathetic view. Themes include questions of identity, security, migration and integration, as well as humanism, democracy and freedom of expression. The focus of the artistic-photographic positions is mostly the image of the human being and his environment. As a topical statement at the Akademie der Künste, the exhibition offers impulses for the current debate about the future of Europe and asks: “How will our continent develop, how will its people live together?”

With the participation of the Luxembourgish photographer Patrick Galbats (Land of Eszter), who documents the “Tiszaeszlar case”, a story about fake news and their consequences at the end of the 19th century.

OSTKREUZ – Agency of Photographers was founded in 1990 in East Berlin and is today considered Germany’s most renowned photographers’ collective. Its members are award-winning auteur photographers who were awarded the Konrad Wolf Prize of the Academy of Arts in 2013.

The Ukrainian-born photographer Mila Teshaieva asks the question of how memories are processed and passed on. To do so, she has family stories from Ukraine re-enacted.

The photographer, who comes from Perpignan, focuses on the reappraisal of history. He follows the traces of World War 2 throughout Europe (including France, Lithuania…) and shows that this collective trauma connects all Europeans, but also how different generations deal with the legacy.

Voelkel’s exhibition shows images of Germany’s external borders that were closed during the Corona pandemic, including the closed border between Germany and Luxembourg.

Wells shows the crisis region around the oil refineries in southeastern Sicily. The refineries were and are at the same time an economic boom, but also a curse for the environment and people, contaminating the water, soil, and air.