Gundula Schulze Eldowy in conversation with Boris Friedewald

Gundula Schulze Eldowy (born 1954) attracted attention in East Berlin with her multifaceted socio-documentary approach to photography and her unsparing yet sensitive nude portraits. On the other side of the Iron Curtain, the Swiss-American photographer and filmmaker Robert Frank (1924–2019) depicted a sobering counter-image to the American Dream, as presented in his by now legendary 1958 photo book The Americans. After their meeting in 1985 in East Berlin, a life-long friendship develops, despite the Berlin Wall and the continents that separate them.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the young photographer took Frank up on his invitation to New York, the Mecca of the avant-garde. There she met numerous artists from Robert Frank's circle of friends: his wife, the artist June Leaf, the photographers Ted Croner and Ann Mandelbaum, the writer Allen Ginsberg as well as other representatives of the beatnik generation.

As part of the exhibition “Keep a Stiff Upper Lip! Gundula Schulze Eldowy and Robert Frank” Gundula Schulze Eldowy talks with art historian Boris Friedewald about her friendship with Robert Frank, the influence of the beatniks and how New York led her to view the world and herself anew, guided by intuition, inspiration and improvisation.