Chapter 10. Portrait of the child as a socialist

Abstract

This chapter focuses on portraits of children in three photographic picturebooks from the German Democratic Republic (GDR). While these picturebooks draw largely on modernist photography in the postwar period, they also react sensitively to ideological demands from the official state authorities. To demonstrate this influence, this chapter exemplifies that these photobooks represent different aesthetic and ideological strategies. While Bullermax (1964) by Edith Rimkus and Horst Beseler is an exemplar of a poetic strategy and Matti im Wald (Matti in the Forest, 1966) by the same couple represents a realistic strategy, Kleiner Bruder Staunemann (Little Brother Marveling Man, 1966) by Hans Hüttner and Lotti Ortner stands for a propagandistic strategy. The chapter analyzes the inherent socialist values of the three books by stressing the idea of the curious socialist child and the effects of montage.