Gundula Schulze Eldowy

Schulze Eldowy was born in 1954 in Erfurt. In 1972 she moved to East Berlin and studied at the Technical School for Advertising and Design in Berlin-Schöneweide. From 1979 to 1984 she attended the Academy of Fine Arts (School of Visual Arts) in Leipzig for photography, studying with Horst Thorau, Arno Fischer, and Evelyn Richter.[1] Her photographs from the 1970s and 1980s are considered some of the most important visual testimonies to East German daily life.[2] Many of her photographs capture the private lives of others with a direct and unsparing gaze, including the living conditions of those living on the margins of society.[2] By documenting counterculture as well as elderly and disabled members of the community, she called to attention those that had been disregarded by official media, which for the most part was with idealized images of those benefiting from socialist society.[1] From 1977 to 1990, Schulze Eldowy worked on various photo series, which occasionally earned disapproval from the authorities.[3] During this period, she created the black and white cycles Berlin on a Dog's Night, Work, Nude Portraits, Tamerlan, Street Scene, The wind fills itself with water, and two color cycles The Big and the Little Step, and The Dog's Last Bite.[2] Despite both solo and group exhibition opportunities and promotions in the photography journal Die Fotografie, the Stasi still attempted to impede her practice due to the opinion that her work negatively portrayed socialist society.[1]

In 1985 she met American photographer Robert Frank, who encouraged her and invited her to go to New York in 1990, where she lived from 1990 to 1993. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Schulze Eldowy led a nomadic lifestyle[4] and continued to photograph during her travels in Italy (1991), Egypt (1993-2000), Japan (1996/97), Moscow (1997), Turkey (1997) and finally in Peru and Bolivia in the 2000s.[5] In 2004, together with her husband Javier A. Garcia Vásquez, she founded the Casa de Arte El Rostro Inconcebible in Moche, Peru.[6] In 2010 she became a member of the Saxon Academy of the Arts.[5]

Schulze Eldowy lives in Berlin and Peru. In addition to her photographic and film work, she has created stories, poems, essays, sound collages and songs.[5]

Schulze Eldowy's work was included in the 2010–2011 MoMA exhibition Pictures by Women: A History of Modern Photography.[7] In 2011 to 2012 she had a yearlong retrospective at C/O Berlin[8], a solo exhibition at Kicken Berlin, and a display at German parliament’s art room and the Berlin Wall memorial.[9] Her photographs are included in a number of exhibitions on East German photography, such as "Do Not Refreeze," which toured the UK in 2008,[10] "East Side Stories" at Kicken Berlin in 2010,[11] and "Restless Bodies" at Rencontres d'Arles in 2019.[12]

Schulze Eldowy's photographs belong to collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York,[13] the Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco,[14] LACMA Los Angeles, [15]FRAC Collection Aquitaine, Bordeaux, [16] Berlinische Galerie, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett,[17] Museum Folkwang, Essen,[18] Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden,[17] Sprengel Museum, Hannover,[19] Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin,[20] Teutloff Collection,[21] and Deutscher Bundestag.[22]

Schulze Eldowy has been featured in the following documentaries:

• Gundula Schulze. Defa-Dokumentarfilmstudio, Berlin 1983, Regie: Helke Misselwitz.[24]
• Les Siderantes. Christine Baudillon, Frankreich 2000.[25]
• Just an Ordinary Life. The Photographers Sibylle Bergemann, Helga Paris, Gundula Schulze Eldowy. MDR und WDR, 2006, Regie: Pamela Meyer-Arndt.[26]