18 Facts About Helga Paris

Helga Paris was a German photographer, known for her photographs of daily life in East Germany.

Helga Paris photographed theatre, and then turned to a series of people and streetscapes, such as Garbage Collectors, Berliner Kneipen, Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, self portraits, and houses and faces from Halle for an exhibition that was cancelled in 1986.

Helga Paris's works, shown internationally, received recognition especially after German reunification as documents of a past.

Helga Paris was introduced to photography by her aunts who took many photographs.

Helga Paris then studied fashion design at the School of Engineering for the Clothing Industry in Berlin until 1960.

Helga Paris then worked briefly as a lecturer of costume studies at a trade school, and worked as a commercial graphic designer for the DEWAG advertisement agency in Berlin.

Helga Paris was a costume designer at the Berliner Studenten- und Arbeitertheater, a theatre of students and workers, which introduced her to the artists' circle around Wolf Biermann.

Helga Paris had developed a passion for photography but, like many of the leading photographers of the German Democratic Republic, was often described as self-taught.

Helga Paris believed that much of her photographic passion and skill were acquired from two aunts who were enthusiastic photographers, constantly taking pictures from the 1940s through the 1960s, which Paris carefully preserved in a collection of show boxes adapted for the purpose.

Helga Paris was influenced by the work of Edvard Munch, Max Beckmann, Francis Bacon, and Werner Held.

Helga Paris presented her first personal exhibition in 1978 at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts.

Helga Paris's work was focused increasingly on people and streetscapes, initially in Berlin where many of her subjects were neighbours and friends.

Helga Paris documented social conditions in several series: Mullfahrer, Berliner Kneipen, Mobeltrager, Altersheim, Berliner Jugendliche and Leipzig Hauptbahnhof.

Helga Paris photographed houses and faces from Halle from 1983 to 1985, with the approach to document everything like a foreign town in a foreign country.

Helga Paris then took time to talk to people and ask before photographing them, making them more open to being photographed but still reluctantly, when the streets in the background showed that the city centre looked badly damaged because it was undergoing major and slow redevelopment.

From 1996, Helga Paris was a member of the Berlin Academy of Arts.

Helga Paris left her archive of around 230,000 negatives and 6,300 films to the institution.

Helga Paris died at her Berlin apartment on 5 February 2024, at the age of 85.