Documentary Photography Of East And West Germany In The Political Ideology Context

After the World War Ⅱ, the confrontation between US and Soviet leads to the ’division of Germany. Cultural policy of socialist realism in GDR and commercialization of capitalism in FRG produced an effect on documentary photography in Germany, both of which projected to propagate their political discourse with visual practice. However, the individual photographers in two Germany tried to explore the social reality, deconstructive the ideology and express their subjective attitude with camera. They questioned the truth as documentary presented and put the consideration in their works. .The paper tries to analyze the different style characteristics and development process of documentary photography between East and West Germany from their different social context and cultural heritage, in order to examine the relationship between art and the context of its time, as well as the interaction between ideology and documentary.