Thomas Wiegand - 66 Photobooks from East Germany

Foxed Editions 2026

Foxed Editions presents 66 Photobooks from East Germany by Thomas Wiegand, the first English-language introduction to photographic book culture in the GDR. For much of the twentieth century, Germany was divided into two states, and while West German photography has long been integrated into international histories of the medium, photographic culture in the GDR has remained comparatively overlooked.

Drawing on Wiegand’s German-language study of over 500 pages and approximately 1,300 illustrations, this book presents a carefully selected survey of 66 photobooks produced in the GDR between 1950 and 1990, making that research accessible to an international audience. Photography in the GDR was never neutral: state-supported, ideologically directed, and yet often graphically inventive and visually striking, even under strict conditions of censorship and material scarcity.

Despite their quality, East German photobooks remained largely absent from international discourse for decades. Several titles have since been recognised in international canons of the most important photobooks, among them Stalinallee (1955), Kriegsfibel (1955), and China (1957). Wiegand’s research is the first sustained effort to map this terrain in depth.

Softcover 144 pages

ISBN 9781068386794