“I am infinitely happy to have lived through that time, […] it was really like seeing history in the making. [… ] And then I realised that I don’t have to read about it in a history book, I was there.”
The photographer Andreas Kämper, born in East Berlin in 1954, captured the revolution in the GDR from 1989 onwards in a photographic diary. He contributed an enlarged version of one of his photos to the Gallery on the Berlin Wall. His picture is now titled “18. Dezember 1989”.
Andreas Kämper in the interview
In 1990 Kämper’s picture consisted of an enlarged photo taken at a demonstration in Leipzig on 18 December 1989. The painted version of 2009 was completed without Kämper’s consent and despite his opposition at the time is now under a preservation order. The original photo showed a protester holding an East German flag with the hammer and compasses cut out. At this demonstration, East German citizens chanted “We are one people” rather than “We are the people” and so called for the unification of the GDR and West Germany.
Andreas Kämper was born in East Berlin in 1954. He started working as a photojournalist in 1978. While producing his photographic diary of the Peaceful Revolution up to reunification, he captured the emergence of the East Side Gallery and gained the opportunity to show his own picture on the Berlin Wall. He continued to document the changes after the revolution. He still works as a freelance photographer but now lives in Brandenburg.
Next to Andreas Kämper’s picture was another enlarged copy of a photo, taken by Jens Hübner. In 2009, this picture was not restored in its original form either but replicated as a painting.