Ute Mahler

Ute Mahler was born in 1949 in Thuringia. She got her love for photography from her father and is now considered to be one of the most stylistically influential photographers in Germany. She, along with other photographers, founded Ostekreuz after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The images above are from her series “Zusammenleben” which means “living together.”

Ute Mahler started shooting this series about 40 years ago and had a book recently published of her pictures. Her series interacts with people who live with eachother, how they interact with people who were familiar with one another, along with how distant they can become. Mahler said in an interview “Today, I think I probably wanted to take pictures where you could see love.” I thought this was interesting because when I first saw these, that was not my interpretation. I first saw happiness, innocence, optimism, anger, heartbreak, depression, companionship, and loneliness. But I suppose those can also be examples of love, or remains of what use to be? I didn’t see love at first because I realized that when I hear the word love, I immediately associate it as “something good,” like the love for family and friends, a long with romantic love. I know that there are dark sides to love, I think we all have experienced some sense of heartbreak or loss, but when I was looking at the pictures and empathizing with the subjects, I didn’t associate “pain” with “love.”

I didn’t connect the good with the bad, I suppose. Needless to say, these were an eye opener to me.