Leipzig 1972

'The smell of domestic and industrial coal, the creaking steps in the central stairwell, the toilets in the corridors. The joy of relatives seeing each other again and the unwrapping of presents; the coffee smelt so good that all else could wait.' - Ute Eskildsen and Timm Rautert While visiting family in Leipzig in fall 1972, two young photographers by the names of Ute Eskildsen and Timm Rautert decided to photograph the city together, with the idea of publishing the series as a book. The photos were made yet then forgotten: the book-Leipzig 1972-is now being published more than half a century later. Eskildsen and Rautert had met at the Folkwang School of Design in Essen and at the time neither could have anticipated the prominent roles they would come to play in photography in Germany: Eskildsen as founding director of the acclaimed photography collection at Museum Folkwang, Essen, and Rautert as professor of photography at the Academy of Visual Arts, Leipzig. The images in this book record their first time in Leipzig together; Rautert had relatives there, visited often and grown to love the city, while the trip marked Eskildsen's very first visit to the German Democratic Republic. During a week of photography, they captured an intensely subjective, quiet picture of the city, one which now forms a remarkable historical record of a city then in a divided country and still bearing the scars of war.