Harald Hauswald was born in 1954 in the provincial town of Radebeul in Saxony, the son of a master photographer. He is a founding member of the OSTKREUZ agency and a holder of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2006, the Federal Agency for Civic Education awarded him the Unity Prize – Citizens’ Prize for German Unity. Through numerous publications and more than 250 solo exhibitions in Germany, USA, France, Italy, and the Netherlands, Hauswald, critical of the system, became the most important chronicler and story-teller using images of the GDR. Above all, his humorous and playful view of interpersonal relationships has made him one of the aesthetically most influential photographers in Germany.

With a combination of social interest and artistic ambition, he looks at people in their environment, in their space, and waits for the decisive moment—and then stops the film, takes a photo, and includes a taste of what happened before and afterwards. In this way, he creates the particular architecture of the photo that characterises all his images. “If you manage to ensure that a film is well received by others, then it is a good picture.”