Seiichi Furuya: Why Dresden? Photographs

Seiichi Furuya's new book, Why Dresden?, is an unusual document: a view of daily life in the latter days of the German Democratic Republic joined with new images made long after Dresden and the GDR were reunited as one Germany. A pivotal artist in both the Japanese and Austrian fine-art photo scene of the 1980s, Furuya found himself in Dresden in 1984 as an interpreter for a Japanese construction company. While there he turned his camera to his young family, recording not only their moments of anxiety and happiness but documenting everyday life behind the Iron Curtain. In 2015, when Furuya was invited back to Dresden to complete the series, he documented familiar places transformed after 30 years as a capitalist system. Exhibited at the Kunsthaus Dresden and published as a combination exhibition catalog and artist book, this volume captures Dresden s split personality of a city deeply affected by politics, war and time.