GILB. Yellowed Images of a Vanished Country
Photographs of East Germany by Lutz Masanetz

November 5 - January 30, 2004

The word “GILB” is a variant on the German for the color yellow: gelb. It is contained in the verb vergilben, which means to turn yellow. As the artist writes, in 1990 his subject matter informed him that the firmly established way of life he had photographed since age 15 was now past: the 17,500 negatives he had assembled in the course of 30 years were now history, as much an archive as any documentation recording a bygone era. He then began to draw on this living archive for an exhibition of black and white images recording East Germany (DDR) during the years the Wall divided it from the West.

The exhibition is in conjunction with an international conference organized by the Departments of German and History at the University of Pennsylvania, November 5-7, The Long Shadow of the Berlin Wall: Fifteen Years after Its Fall. For more information visit the conference web page www.history.upenn.edu/Conference2004/conference2004.htm

View photographs from the opening reception

View photographs from the educational event

All photos courtesy of Lutz Masanetz