The photo of the “Karl Marx Brigade, VEB Elektrokohle Berlin” is a traditional commissioned work for a traditional group portrait. It was created for the Neue Berliner Illustrierte (NBI), a widely circulated weekly magazine in the former GDR. The purpose of the project was to give the ruling class an image that represented their right to rule and make this “Überbild”, or “meta-image”, credible through the authenticity of photography. Ludwig Rauch hung around at the factory for half a year until he got to know the workers and had a result that he was satisfied with. The publication of this photo was prohibited. The photographer along with it. A publication ban was placed on him, and it remained until he left the country.
The reasons for the rejection only seem obvious. Of course, the victors of history don’t look like this. This is not because Rauch could have photographed the workers differently. The problem is much more that there are no victors of history, but an image of them. The clients had a preconceived image, fixed in their minds, of the paragon that was to appear in public. The cliches are always in existence, long before someone comes along to confirm them. Any artist who wants to meet such demands of a client must, after all, fail, and indeed, less in his craft than in his expendability. However, this tendency to withdrawal of self did not merit consideration for Ludwig Rauch because it was (and is) his conviction that the dignified form of the image emerges from the dignity of the subject.
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