Near one another – Intimacy and love
Love and sexuality are enormously important for young people – after all, they represent the decisive step toward adulthood. With this in mind, the 1990 German Youth Photo Prize announced »Love« as a special competition theme.
Even in the decades before this time there are numerous works dealing with the topic that clearly testify to the transformation of social conventions and morals in the past fifty years. At the beginning of the 1960s the works tend to portray the cautious attempt to make contact – typical of those times – in a public situation. But under the influence of the wave of sex education spilling over from America, the prudery of the post-war era and the taboo of sexuality gradually begin to lose importance in the following years. Starting in the 1980s intimacy is no longer practiced only in the private sphere, but is more and more openly displayed, and correspondingly it is arranged and staged in the youth photography of those times. Part of this development, moreover, is the depiction of the topic of homosexuality. Toward the end of the 1990s the number of »permissive« works increases.
Characteristic of all of the photographs displayed here is the enormous importance of nearness. With increasing intimacy the photos show more physical contact with the respective partner. This mutual »We in the picture« has the character of momentary self-assurance and invokes at the same time the »We« for the future.
