ARNO FISCHER
German
Arno Fischer and Evelyn Richter are the most
prominent names of the older generation of the
former German Democratic Republic (East Ger-
many) photographers. Arno Fischer is today seen
as the outstanding East German photographer
personality and as ‘‘the most well-known of the
unknown German photographers.’’ Even to the
present, Fischer devotes himself to photography in
two ways: as a photographer and teacher. In both
fields he has been very influential on generations of
younger photographers.
Born in 1927 in Berlin-Wedding, Arno Fischer
soon had the idea of becoming a press photogra-
pher, but ultimately decided to undergo an appren-
ticeship in carpentry. His parents died early, and he
was raised by relatives. His uncle, a dedicated ama-
teur photographer, inspired him to make his first
photographs in 1941. After his military service and
imprisonment in England, he returned to Berlin in
1946 and started to study drawing and sculpture at
theKa ̈the-Kollwitz-Kunstschule in West Berlin in
1947–1948. After the closing of that school, he
continued his studies of sculpture at theHochschule
fu ̈r Angewandte Kunstat Berlin-Charlottenburg; he
broke off his studies in 1953 when he was denied a
scholarship for having previously studied in the
east. It was for solely financial reasons that he
moved into the eastern part of the city with his
wife and started working as a photolab technician.
In 1956, he obtained an assignment at the picture
archive of theHochschule fu ̈r Bildende und Ange-
wandte Kunst in Berlin-Weißensee. There he
became first assistant of the graphic artist Klaus
Wittkugel and freelance photography teacher.
Since 1962, he worked as a photographer for the
fashion and culture magazineSibylle. From the
middle of the 1960s, he shot picture reports in
other socialist countries and worked for various
magazines and newspapers likeFreie Welt, Wo-
chenpost, Sonntag. In 1971, Fischer resigned from
Weißensee and continued as a freelance photogra-
pher. He traveled to Africa on behalf of his clients
and published several illustrated volumes on cities.
In 1974, he took a two-year teaching fellowship at
theHochschule fu ̈r Grafik und Buchkunst(HGB) in
Leipzig. In the 1970s and 1980s, he undertook se-
veral trips to the USSR, France, Great Britain, The
Netherlands, and the United States.
Together with others, Fischer founded the work
groupFotografiein theVerband Bildender Ku ̈nstler
of the GDR. In 1983, he obtained an assignment at
the HGB in Leipzig as a professor of artistic pho-
tography. Besides this, he taught press journalism
at theFachhochschulein Dortmund, West Germa-
ny, from 1991 until 2000; in 1993, he had to leave
the HGB.
Arno Fischer always looked for a direct confron-
tation with reality, and was a committed proponent
of subjective social photography. He tried to con-
vey a familiar feeling for life, and to express his
political convictions in a symbolic way. From
1952 onwards, Fischer concentrated on photogra-
phy as his medium. His experience as a student of
sculpture made him stress the presentation of plastic
bodies in his pictures. ‘‘One of my strong points in
sculpture was relief, and that consists mainly of
composition for me. That is, I see the world already
as something composed when I look at it.’’ Never-
theless his style is narrative and does not depict a
posed reality. Even if some pictures look as if they
have been staged, they are never more than some-
times intensely awaited moments of real events—
‘the decisive moment.’ His commercial photographs
also were imbued with considerable artistry, seeking
to rise above mere illustration and to raise impor-
tant existential questions.
Fischer habitually worked with single images,
although at times he later arranged many into a
series. The most important among these series are
photographs from divided Berlin of the 1950s.
The pictures were meant to document what was
happening in Berlin, the focal point of the Ger-
man division that had taken on a distinct shape
by then: the social, political, and economical
polarisation of the city had become an unmistak-
able fact. Fischer’s doubts about the West and
sympathy for the East are conspicuous. Fischer
did not focus on the symbolic interpretation of
ruins or the architectonic destruction of Berlin;
his interest was rather to gain insight into socialFISCHER, ARNO