On Thursday 31 October 2019 at 6 pm, Galleria Studio Cenacchi, in the heart of Bologna, opens Berlin, Brandenburger Tor 1989, an exhibition of 40 previously unseen photographs by Massimo Golfieri. Curated by Jacopo Cenacchi and supported by the Goethe Zentrum Bologna, the exhibition runs until 28 November 2019.

Thirty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, these photographs by the Imola-based photographer are being shown to the public for the first time. Together, they take us back to one of the defining moments of the twentieth century.

The fall of the Wall brought an era to an end and, with it, the hope of a future shaped by peace and solidarity. For 28 years, from 13 August 1961 to 9 November 1989, the Wall divided not only Berlin and Germany, but a continent. It became the most potent symbol of the Iron Curtain and of a Europe split between the Western powers — France, the United Kingdom and the United States — and the Soviet bloc during the Cold War.

On 9 November 1989, the East German government was forced to open its borders with West Germany. Berliners poured towards the Wall from both East and West. There was euphoria and disbelief: people wept, cheered, embraced and kissed. The fall of the Berlin Wall became one of the defining events of the twentieth century, changing the course of history.

Massimo Golfieri photographed Berlin in November and December 1989, capturing the atmosphere on both sides of the Wall as the city entered an uncertain new era. His images are both a historical record and a compelling body of photographic work.

The faces in Golfieri’s photographs reveal a more complex range of emotions than the familiar images of celebration might suggest. Joy and hope are there, but so are anxiety and fear. What would reunification mean for the German people? What kind of future lay ahead? What would be the social and economic consequences of the collapse of the communist regime? Golfieri’s photographs hold these questions within them, tracing both the exhilaration and the unease of a divided world coming back together.

Franco Minganti, author of one of the critical essays accompanying the exhibition, writes:

“In most of the photographs, we quite literally have our backs to the Wall: it is the Wall that looks at us, becoming a point of view that the photojournalist powerfully internalises. The faces are what the Wall sees, on either side, almost without distinction. […] The camera explores and captures everything around it which, thirty years later, takes on a new depth when set against the now familiar imagery of that epoch-defining event: the fall of the Berlin Wall.”

All the photographs in the exhibition are analogue black-and-white prints on baryta silver gelatin paper. Many have been individually hand-coloured using a pictorialist technique with albumen pigments, making each coloured print unique.

Alongside the photographs, a video created by Golfieri and shown on a continuous loop offers a closer look at Berlin in 1989, immersing visitors in the atmosphere of those extraordinary weeks.

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Massimo Golfieri
BERLIN, Brandenburger Tor 1989
Curated by Jacopo Cenacchi
Texts by Andrea Angelini, Franco Minganti, Massimo Golfieri, Jacopo Cenacchi

31 October > 28 November 2019
special opening: Friday 1 November 3:30–7:00 pm

GALLERIA STUDIO CENACCHI
Via Santo Stefano 63
40125 Bologna

OPENING HOURS
Tuesday–Saturday: 4:30–7:30 pm
Monday: by appointment
Sunday: closed