Harald Hauswald
Germany
Bio
Harald was born in 1954 and learnt his trade in the photography shop his father ran near Dresden.
He very quickly started looking for subject matter that contradicted official ideology. He was interested in people on the margins of society, people that weren’t supposed to exist in a Socialist state, punks, hooligans, the homeless and dissidents. He was under surveillance and targeted by the Stasi and secretly established contact with journalists in West Germany who helped find a place for his photos in the Western press.
Reunification turned his life upside down. His work, a visual chronical of life in East Germany, was now reputed. In the spring of 1990 he decided to set up an agency, Ostkreuz, with seven other photographers. Their aim was to help photographers from the east to find their way in this new political system whose esthetic was so different. In 1997 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit, Germany’s highest decoration. The way he works hasn’t changed. He remains a street photographer, who spends his days walking the streets of Berlin, photographing what others don’t see. He still uses film and still works in black and white.