"Immediately after the border was opened in November 1989, I received a phone call from a professor at the University of Wismar. He was an environmental activist and opposed to nuclear power. In East Germany, he had had to keep a low profile. Now, however, he saw an opportunity to express his opinions openly and asked me if I would like to collaborate with him. He contacted the Kulturwerk of the GDR, which then invited me to participate in an exhibition entitled “Probleme ohne Grenzen” [“Problems without Borders”]. It turned out to be a great success because it was now possible, for the first time, to present critical images publicly, too.
By the way, we experienced something strange in connection with the exhibition: we used a spirit level to help us hang up the photos in the old timber-framed building. And although the pictures were now hanging there in a wonderfully straight line, they somehow looked wrong. The problem was that the house had sunk over the years and the walls were now completely crooked."
Günter Zint (Hamburg)
