The photo book Lange Weile comprises a selection of 400 black-and-white photographs taken by Tina Bara between 1983 and 1989, in East Berlin, the German Democratic Republic, and on her travels. Combined with texts in the form of subtitles, this artist’s book is also the book for a photo film. The artist talks from today’s perspective about the beginnings of her artistic and photographic work combined with the search for feminine identity and a subversive, melancholy rebellion against East Germany’s dictatorial system.
Documentary photographs on a clandestine trip to Russia, forbidden photographs taken at the publicly owned VEB Buna chemical plant, and observations of punks and other young rebels are all interwoven with intense full-body and portrait photographs of her friends as well as a ‘photographic love story’.
They are about breaking out of a system perceived as boring and monotonous, a system that seeks to suppress individuality and self-will.
Together with her own overlaid memories the photographic material creates an intimate cosmos which, from a distance of some thirty years, recreates the atmosphere and mood of a country and society that no longer exist. The search between awakening, doubt and self-exploration, between political structures and personal artistic intent and the will to live can also be read at a general level, just like her reflections on the role of photography in this process.

Tina Bara, *1962 in Kleinmachnow, Germany (former GDR). Lives and works in Berlin and Leipzig, Germany.