Evelyn Richter und Ursula Arnold Archiv — Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

The Evelyn Richter and Ursula Arnold Archive is a cooperation project between the Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung and the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig. The works of the photographers are preserved and researched at the MdbK and communicated through exhibitions and publications

THe Archivs

Evelyn Richter, An der Museumsinsel. Berlin 1972, © Evelyn Richter Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

Ursula Arnold, 1. Mai. Berlin 1965, © Ursula Arnold Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

Ursula Arnold, Zeitungsfrau. Leipzig 1956, © Ursula Arnold Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

Evelyn Richter, David Oistrach. Berlin 1963, © Evelyn Richter Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

Ursula Arnold, o.T., Leipzig 1956, © Ursula Arnold Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

Evelyn Richter, Musikviertel. Leipzig 1976, © Evelyn Richter Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

Eva Wagner-Zimmermann, Evelyn Richter und Ursula Arnold beim Arbeitseinsatz, 1953/54, Evelyn Richter und Ursula Arnold Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig, © Evelyn Richter Archiv

The Evelyn Richter Archive of the Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung at the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig was founded on November 12, 2009. The archive is based on the collection of the photographer's most important groups of works acquired by the Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung. In close collaboration with Evelyn Richter, documents, books and photographs were added to the archive until her death. Her artistic concept and working methods can be studied on the basis of the more than 900 motifs. The work of the archive is determined by the fundamental museum tasks of collecting, preserving, researching and communicating.

In summer 2016, the Sparkassenstiftung expanded the archive with the Ursula Arnold Archive of the Ostdeutsche Sparkassenstiftung at the Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig to include another important voice in documentary and artistic photography. In close cooperation with Andreas Arnold, the photographer's son, it was possible to acquire the artist's entire oeuvre. With the two archives, the work of two of the most important representatives of documentary photography in the GDR is preserved, researched and appropriately cared for. At the same time, a unique collection of contemporary historical documents has found a home.

Evelyn Richter

Evelyn Richter, Pförtnerin im Rathaus, Leipzig um 1975, © Evelyn Richter Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

Evelyn Richter, Vor Wolfgang Mattheuers Bild „Die Ausgezeichnete“. Albertinum Dresden 1975, © Evelyn Richter Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

Evelyn Richter, Weberei. Ringenhain in der Lausitz, 1958/59, © Evelyn Richter Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

Evelyn Richter, born in Bautzen in 1930, is one of the most important, internationally acclaimed representatives of humanistic artistic photography in the GDR. After a three-year apprenticeship as a photographer in Dresden with Pan and Christine Walther, where she learned the traditional craft, she sought an artistic challenge: she began studying photography in Leipzig in 1953, which she had to end prematurely after two years due to her involuntary exmatriculation. Richter's high expectations of artistic teaching were not fulfilled. In the 1950s, teaching objectives and course content at the university, as well as the cultural policy debate and professional reality, were not yet tailored to the professional profile of an artistically working photographer. She was looking for the "unadorned" image of people and life in her own everyday reality. From 1955, she worked freelance, initially in the field of theater photography, for the daily press and various magazines (Das Magazin, Für Dich, Fotofalter, Sibylle) as well as for the Leipzig Trade Fair. Through her photojournalistic work, she was able to pursue her artistic interests. In the 1970s and 1980s, she published three photo books: David Oistrakh. Ein Arbeitsporträt (1973), Paul Dessau.Aus Gesprächen (1974) and Entwicklungswunder Mensch (1980, 1st edition, text: Hans-Dieter Schmidt).In 1981, the photographer returned to the HGB as a lecturer.From 1981 to 2001, she taught young photographers how to see and take photographs.From 1990 to 1991, she also worked at the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences.

Evelyn Richter was interested in the creative and social tasks of photography.Her long-term photojournalistic projects began in 1957.Her photographic studies of the living and working conditions of her fellow human beings countered the self-image of the GDR as a supposedly more humane society. She created groups of works on the subjects of working women, trainees, travelers on public transport, exhibition visitors and portraits of artists. But urban landscapes, which thematize the dreariness, decay and living conditions in the GDR, also became motifs in Richter's photographs. In the fall of 1989, Richter urged students to document political events on the streets. She organized light-sensitive films from West Germany and took to the streets herself as a photographer, documentarian and demonstrator. After the Peaceful Revolution, Evelyn Richter began to review and process her photographic work.

In 2020, she was awarded the first Bernd and Hilla Becher Prize by the City of Düsseldorf for her life's work.In October 2021, the photographer died in Dresden at the age of 91.

Ursula Arnold

Ursula Arnold, Weimar, 1950, © Ursula Arnold Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im Museum der bildenden Künste Leipzig

Ursula Arnold, Barfußgässchen, Leipzig, 1965, © Ursula Arnold Archiv der Ostdeutschen Sparkassenstiftung im MdbK

Ursula Arnold was born in Gera in 1929, where her father Walter Musche ran a studio as a photographer.After graduating from high school in 1948, she decided to become a photographer and studied in the studio of Harry Evers in Weimar, a student of Walter Hege.In 1950, Ursula Arnold continued her studies at the Academy of Visual Arts (HGB) in Leipzig.Her time at the college until she graduated in 1955 was not very inspiring for her, in fact it was rather disappointing. The incipient formalism debate impaired her freedom in teaching, which was strictly oriented towards state guidelines and prescribed a socialist visual world. Experiments were not permitted and could lead to expulsion from school. Her son Andreas was born in 1953. Ursula Arnold and Evelyn Richter, who had been studying at the university since 1953, enjoyed an intensive exchange of ideas and a lifelong friendship. She probably also attended the exhibition The Family of Man organized by Edward Steichen in West Berlin with her, which also became groundbreaking for her future artistic work. After graduating from university, Arnold began working as a freelance photographer.The attempt, together with a number of fellow students including F. O.Bernstein, Rosemarie Eichhorn, Volkmar Jaeger, Evelyn Richter, Renate and Roger Rössing, Günter Rössler, W.G. Schröter and Helga Wallmüller in 1956 under the militant name action fotografie to exhibit pictures that were personally important to them and in which they wanted to express a new view of people and the environment, failed in 1957 after the second exhibition due to the cultural-political framework conditions.

In 1957 - after only 18 months as a freelancer - Ursula Arnold gave up her work as a photographer, as her subjective, empathetic view as a photojournalist was rejected. She moved to Berlin with her family and took a job as a camerawoman in the dramatic arts department of GDR television.In 1968 she became the "first camerawoman".In the mid-1960s, she began documenting people in the city of Berlin in the dreariness of everyday life to balance out her job. She only showed and discussed her photographs privately with her closest friends, Evelyn Richter and the sculptor Christa Sammler. In 1985, she stopped working as a camera operator for GDR television and, following in the footsteps of Theodor Fontane, turned to landscape photography, creating series about the Leuenberg Forest and Märkische Schweiz Nature Park, among others. In 2003, Ursula Arnold was awarded the Hannah Höch Prize of the State of Berlin. She died in Berlin in 2012.