Barbara Wolff

NEW RELEASE

„Sechzehneichen“

An autobiographical pictorial narrative from Prignitz, 1982 – 1985.

Between 1982 and 1985, artist Barbara Wolff and her partner lived in a land reform house in the Brandenburg village of Sechzehneichen. They shared the house with a dog, a cat, sheep—and the gaze of others.
Wolff set up a studio and photo lab under the roof, documenting everyday life, the people in the village, the light over the fields. What initially appears to be a peaceful chronicle of rural life gradually unfolds into a multi-layered contemporary document about art, control, and new beginnings.
The photographs, etchings, and texts form a quiet, poetic narrative about life in the late GDR.
Alternating between closeness and distance, memory and Stasi protocols, a haunting portrait emerges of a time between private retreat and public observation that finds its artistic language.
Format A5, 84 pages, 81 illustrations, hand-folded and stamped cover made of solid-colored cardboard. Numbered and signed, edition of 300 copies, ISBN 978-3-9822385-5-5
Gross retail price according to fixed book pricing €24.00 [D]

Brandenburg Museum

“Seeking the Wide Open Spaces. Photographs of the Late GDR and Early 1990s”

The exhibition “Das Weite suchen” (Seeking the Wide Open Spaces) presents images from a decade that is now remembered and discussed controversially. It shows photographs by Tina Bara, Christiane Eisler, Christian Fenger, Anselm Graubner, Annette Hauschild, Ute Mahler, Jürgen Matschie, Peter Oehlmann, Ludwig Rauch, Joachim Richau, Merit Schambach, and Barbara Wolff. These are works by twelve photographers who sought the wide open spaces in a personal, artistic, and socio-documentary way. Between 1983 and 1995, the artists captured stagnation and existential changes in their images.

28.11.2025 – 22.03.2026

Vernissage: 27.11.2025

Brandenburg Museum

Images, Barbara Wolff:
From the series Sechzehneichen “Ausreisegepäck” (Departure Luggage), “Ghostwriter”
Accompanying Barbara Wolff’s participation in the exhibition, Lunik Verlag is publishing “Sechzehneichen” (Sixteen Oaks). An autobiographical pictorial narrative from Prignitz, 1982–1985.

Gallery noirblanche, Düsseldorf

„NEW YORK“

Group exhibition with Monika Baumgartl, Barbara Wolff, F. C. Gundlach, Walter Schels, Horst Wackerbarth

18.10.2025 – 10.01.2026

https://www.noirblanche.de

Images:
Barbara Wolff, New York, 2023

ARTE Film Documentary

The documentary film by Daniel Guthmann and Joachim Palutzki introduces two photographers who worked in the GDR and whose work has been rediscovered in recent years: Eberhard Klöppel, who grew up in Mansfelder Land and, as a press photographer for the “Neue Berliner Illustrierte”, realized many photo reportages that today offer diverse insights into the reality of people’s lives in the GDR. Dietmar Riemann from Hartha in Saxony, who became increasingly critical of the state in which he lived. In 1986, he applied to leave the country, which was not approved until 1989. During the period of waiting and uncertainty, he wrote a diary of over 1000 pages and secretly photographed the Berlin Wall and border fortifications.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Barbara Wolff, who was born in Brandenburg, documented life in the countryside and everyday village life, many aspects of which seemed archaic and timeless despite the socialist transformation of agricultural production.
The Berlin-born photographer Christiane Eisler came into contact with the punk movement in the early 1980s and portrayed one of the first punk bands in the GDR: Wutanfall, like the living conditions in the educational institutions to which young punks were forcibly committed in the 1980s.

Barbara Wolff
NEW YORK, SIDEWALK CLOSED

Black and white photographs of New York from 2023.
With an essay by Daniel Blochwitz in German and English.

After their successful “METROPOLIS, BERLIN” photo book – which received the Silver German Photo Book Award in 2021/22 – Barbara Wolff and Lunik Berlin Verlag are now presenting “NEW YORK, SIDEWALK CLOSED”, their second photo book. „NEW YORK, SIDEWALK CLOSED“ – a book that is again dedicated to one of the great cities of the world.

Barbara Wolff’s photographs were taken during a month-long stay in New York in June 2023. In almost timeless black and white photographs, Ms. Wolff shows us the New York of today, as a post-pandemic city that has risen after a dark and destructive time.

Although New York had already been much photographed, she was able to wrest her own images with a broad depth of field. Indeed, the precision of her imagery reveals many levels of New York life that goes beyond simple portrayal. Her photography reveals the dream destination of many tourists as well as the residents’ hopes and struggles for survival. Her photography reveals the dream destination of many tourists as well as the residents’ hopes and struggles for survival.

The attached captions show the locations that Ms. Wolff visited. Eingeführt werden die Bildkapitel, die das Buch gliedern, durch einen Essay von Daniel Blochwitz, der als freier Kurator und Autor mit Schwerpunkt Fotografie in der Schweiz lebt.”
(Buchvorstellung des Lunik Berlin Verlages)

Barbara Wolff: NEW YORK, SIDEWALK CLOSED
144 pages, 21 x 28 cm, 112 black and white photographs in triplex print, thread stitching,
Hardcover with linen, printed at DZA Druckerei zu Altenburg.
The book is available in four cover variants.
ISBN 978-3-9822385-1-7

Product page:
Lunik Berlin Verlag: NEW YORK, SIDEWALK CLOSED

Frankfurter Allgemeine, review, PDF

Portfolio:
NEW YORK, SIDEWALK CLOSED

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