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Interview: Photographer Gunter Kloetzer on “Germans in America: Insights into a Friendship”

Photo of photographer Lothar Osterburg, by Gunter Kloetzer

“Germans in America: Insights into a Friendship,” an exhibition by German photographer Gunter Kloetzer, shows first-generation German immigrants from all walks of life who have chosen to leave their homeland and settle in the United States. The photographs are accompanied by interviews that delve into the motives for immigration today as well as the current generation of German immigrants’ relationship to their host country. Mr. Kloetzer spoke about his ongoing project in an exclusive interview with Germany.info. In October 2004, the German Embassy in Washington hosted a private sneak preview of the exhibition before it opened to the public at Georgetown University. The exhibition is now viewable online at the link below.

Germany.info: What was your impetus for photographing first-generation Germans who have made their homes in the United States?

Gunter Kloetzer: There were two reasons. First, there is my personal background, the second is more of an applied reason, more of a journalistic reason. First, I grew up in former East Germany, and my understanding of the United States was founded on its being, politically speaking, the opposite of what my own country was. It interested me as a completely different world, as a world that was unreachable during the Cold War. With the unification of Germany, I immediately moved to West Germany. I consciously left the GDR, consciously left the system it represented, and experienced in the west that this new, unified country – though united by a common language – was comprised of two completely different entities, more so than I had ever imagined.

And I learned through conversations with my friends and colleagues that the development of the west had very much been influenced by the United States, its societal developments, its economic development. Thirteen years later, I decided it was time for me to go to the United States and experience the country for myself. It was my personal interest in reaching a world that had – for so long – been completely unreachable, and, following my interest in sociology, to try to tap into the way the United States is developing now.

The other reason for the project is that there is a growing anti-Americanism in Germany and in Europe that is partially fuelled by the media, but which doesn’t represent the relationship the two countries have had for all of these decades. There is an antagonism on both sides that simply cannot be perpetuated. My goal is to inform about an aspect of this relationship – independent of media.

Photo of Nicole Laemmle by Gunter Kloetzer.

Germany.info: Your photographs show people in their homes instead of at the workplace. Why is it important to see these people in their own personal environment instead of the world in which they are most active?

Gunter Kloetzer: Like I said before, I’m interested in delivering information – information that is independent of institutions and businesses. I’m trying to appeal to the humanity in these people – and this should reach a large spectrum of people. I’m interested in photographing “normal” people in their homes to give the viewers of these photos the opportunity to step into the private sphere of these people. That shows, for one, that these are open people, they open their homes to the viewers, it has to do with the private sphere. I’m not trying to take pictures of people in staged photos or in front of monuments, I’m giving real people an opportunity to tell their life stories, and to do it in a way that in no way corresponds to an advertising image but to real life.

Germany.info: The history of German immigration to the United States is over 400 years old. What do you think – when reading at the statements made by your subjects – moves today’s generation to immigrate to America?

Gunter Kloetzer: When you look at the history of German immigration to America, it was predominantly economic reasons that moved Germans to immigrate – in addition to the motivation of religious freedom. Some of them fled Germany. I think that today, it has more to do with globalization and modern mobility. I know so many people who actually live in both worlds today. My own life is developing in that direction as well – something that I couldn’t have imagined for myself two years ago. But in the end, it has something to do with adventure as well. Some are sent by international conglomerates with locations in both countries. It’s not a phenomenon that’s particular to Germany and America anymore. And that’s why I have concentrated my project on first-generation German immigrants to the United States, because they came for reasons that are often completely different from their predecessors. German migration is a heavily researched topic – but the immigrants of today are in many ways an untapped resource.

Germany.info: The subtitle of your project is “Insights into a Friendship.” How is the German-American friendship expressed through this project?

Gunter Kloetzer: It’s expressed in the very personal relationship that each of the photographed “protagonists” has to the United States. It is a friendship that has nothing to do with a political construction – but with a personal experience. There are so many personal connections – love, marriage – that are also in their way a friendship. I am interested in depicting the simplest of personal relationships between the people of these two countries – something that often gets lost in today’s media world. Does this friendship still exist? That’s the question that I asked myself when approaching this project. My work offers something on a very personal level, a very human level.

Germany.info: You did interviews of your subjects that can in no way be called mere captions to photographs. Is there something – other than nationality – that connects these people?

Gunter Kloetzer: The uniting force among these people is that they chose to leave their homeland for the United States. It is the same phenomenon the world round, regardless of the peoples’ motives. It’s a sociological construction within a society – its an interest that became clear to me when the exhibit opened in New York. The visitors read these interviews with unbridled energy – all of them. What does a person think, feel, write, in this kind of situation? They are people in another society that are required to redefine themselves. That’s what connects these people. And an interesting aspect of this is that at first, today’s German immigrants want nothing to do with other Germans, they want to experience the United States. But after about two years, they find themselves wanting to reconnect with fellow Germans, with people that have a cultural connection to them – whether they want it or not.

Germany.info:What’s next for your project?

Gunter Kloetzer: Of course it isn’t enough to photograph Germans in New York, or just Germans from the two coasts. My eventual plan is to drive throughout the United States and talk to people from fundamentally different backgrounds, and photograph them, and to capture people from throughout the country, because in the end, it is this mix of people that makes America. I want to get a biographical diversity – but I also want geographical diversity, a sample of people outside of the major cities. For me, it is much more interesting to visit the people in the countryside than merely to photograph artists in their studios or businesspeople in New York. It will be difficult to find these people, but I think that doing so will create a much more diverse group than what can be found in the big city.

Links:

“Germans in America: Insights into a Friendship”