Halt die Ohren steif!

Gundula Schulze Eldowy and Robert Frank first crossed paths on 8 June 1985. The Swiss Amer-ican photographer had been awarded the Dr Erich Salomon Prize in West Berlin and took a tripone afternoon to the eastern part of the city. Everyone there was familiar with the photos fromhis book The Americans. Some of East Berlin's foremost photographers had gathered at RudolfSchäfer's house and were waiting for Frank, eager to show him their pictures. Schulze Eldowy wasthe last in line. Frank was impressed by her series Aktporträts (Nude Portraits), Arbeit (Work), andTamerlan. He invited her to New York-even though the Wall still posed an obstacle at the time.Between 1985 and 1989 they kept in contact writing letters to one another, before Schulze Eldowymoved to the East Village in May 1990, where she worked untiel 1993 in close proximity with RobertFrank and his wife, the artist June Leaf. The catalogue brings together the two photographers'correspondence as well as the images from Schulze Eldowy's time in New York, which pushed herphotographic work in a new direction.Gundula Schulze Eldowy, b. 1954 in Erfurt, studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig (HGB) andbegan working as a freelance photographer in Berlin in 1984. In the period up until 1990, sheproduced the black-and-white works Berlin in einer Hundenacht, Arbeit, Aktporträts, Tamerlan,and the two colour cycles Der große und der kleine Schritt and Den letzten beißen die Hunde. In1990 she embarked on a series of journeys that took her to Egypt (1993-2000), Japan (1996-97),and, from 2001 on, to Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador. She lives in Berlin and Peru.