People who are fully with themselves — sitting at bus stops, gazing absentmindedly into the distance, or rushing from one appointment to the next, with no time to fix their hair — these were Helga Paris’s favorite subjects. The unadorned, honest encounters that the self-taught photographer captured throughout her life in black-and-white snapshots. Her unposed series with titles like Berliner Jugendliche, Mein Alex, and Hellersdorf still tell of a divided Germany, which she began portraying almost incidentally in the 1980s. The exhibition für uns at Fotografiska, honoring the great East German photographer who passed away in 2024, proves that her images of neighbors, garbage collectors, bakers, waitresses, and retirement home residents remain timeless.
Paris always sought the everyday and connection in her subjects. Looking into the faces of East Berlin punks or the tired eyes of waitresses, you might imagine finding the same gazes today in Kreuzberg or Wedding. She never polished rough edges. She found beauty in crumbling façades. From her apartment in Prenzlauer Berg, she encountered the world around her with a sincere tenderness she extended to everyone without precondition. Her portraits are steeped in questions of origin and class, but Paris approached them neither didactically nor voyeuristically. In front of her camera, everyone stood on equal footing, whether she was photographing pub owners or women in work smocks. And that, so powerfully conveyed in the sensitively curated exhibition by former Nationalgalerie director Udo Kittelmann at Fotografiska, is Helga Paris’s enduring legacy: she saw the human first. She was interested in the person in front of her. In us.
Text: Laura Storfner / Credits: Nachlass Estate Helga Paris
Fotografiska Berlin, Oranienburger Str. 54, 10117 Berlin–Mitte; map
Helga Paris: für uns 06.09.2025–25.01.2026
Exhibition Takeover 06.09.2025 19–23h. Get tickets here.
@fotografiska.berlin
