Photographer: Tobias Kruse, born Mecklenburg and residing Berlin, Germany
Publisher: Kerber Verlag Berlin/Nürnberg, Germany
Text(s): German and English
Softcover, Width: 17cm x Length: 24cm, bound, 42 places, 35 people, 216 pages
Design: Neue Gestaltung Berlin
Notes: Berlin is a hot spot where the good life is lived, toasted, and celebrated. But truth be told, the strong art making of my generation (ages 35 to 45) in Berlin today leaves much to be desired. I see many people looking for the meaning of life in Berlin, as well as that of their own individual lives. Perhaps the contrast between the once divided city and the Berliners who live there today is so strong, creating art with meaning might be quite a complicated task within Berlin itself. Good Berlin art is created outside of Berlin, on trips, or on the outskirts of the city, in the surrounding areas.
Tobias Kruse has lived as a photographer in Berlin for 20 years and has now published his first photography book called “Material” . The title is pointedly provocative right off the bat. Don’t we dream of photography books that form a narrative out of a clever assembly and sequence of images, thereby taking the reader on a journey that unfolds through fine observations of perceptions? As a reader of this book, you want to see more than just material. But our senses are obscured. The author works with a reserved title, but once one begins reading, an explosion of thoughts and emotions erupt around life, life in one’s late 30s.
It turned out to be a dense book, about the situation of the author himself. Kruse came to Berlin 10 years ago to train professionally as a photographer at the Ostkreuz Photography School in Berlin. He studied under Arno Fischer – the Henri Cartier Bresson of the former GDR – in the last years of Fischer’s life. He was thereby brought up in the milieu of East German humanist documentary photography and has developed his own visual language over the years.
Few artists succeed in already developing their own visual language at such a young age. Again and again, Kruse’s peers can be seen in all facets of young life, confronted with dreams, the search for happiness, often together, and then alone again. They are images of being at home in Berlin, travelling around the country, encounters in Europe in Arles, Athens, and Tel Aviv. The pictures in the book become a kind of rush of life: its blooming, its transience. Out of this community of friends over many years, a family has emerged. Kruse dedicates the book to his children, Karl and Carla, who also appear frequently in the book.
Why should you buy this book? Because Kruse is one of the exceptionally strong gifted artists of the younger generation to come out of the environment of the Ostkreuz School and Agency. Because it has turned out to be a book that describes the attitude to life of a generation that was born in the ‘70s, grew up in the ‘90s, and have now become the generation on whom society has pinned its hopes. Hopefully, we will be seeing and hearing a lot more about Kruse’s personal work in the future.
Review – Kristin Dittrich, Director Shift School for contemporary Photography, Dresden, Germany
PhotoBook Journal 