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February 13, 2011
Margret Hoppe was born in 1981 and studied philosophy, art history as well as photography. The Leipzig-trained photographer often explore the absence and disappearance of the socialist realism imagery in former communist countries in Eastern Europe. An example is the Bulgarian monuments series.
Hoppe says that in this post communist state there are still many outdated monuments that still represent the ideology of communist power:
Margret Hoppe,Stoju Todorow: Unity of the fight for national and social freedom, 1975, Busludscha summit metal, concrete, 2007
These are now ruins that being re-interpreted.
Hoppe says:
After the cultural turn in 1989 the character of those monuments changed. They were destroyed or abandoned and thus altered their appearance. In my photos I show different states of their variation and by doing so put a question mark over the value of those relics.
They would also be forgotten with the painful memories of life under a dictatorship buried. They would eventually become alien:
Margret Hoppe, Dimo Saimow: Die Partei (The Party), 1976, wall painting/ party building Pernik, 2007
Hoppe photographed these socialist monuments ehile on a DAAD scholarship in Bulgaria, a popular holiday destination in GDR times.
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