Headwind

1968: Many of the photos that shape the collective memory of this time come from Michael Ruetz: Rudi Dutschke at the microphone, the demonstrations following Benno Ohnesorg's death, Gudrun Ensslin with a stroller and protest posters. These are images that everyone knows. Fifty years later, Ruetz has asked himself: Did I really see what I photographed back then? And are the well-known images also the essential ones? In the pictures taken between 1964 and 1974, Michael Ruetz shows the people as they appeared to him in the 1960s - not only in the photos of the 1968 revolution but also in photos from the former GDR, from Poland, from Auschwitz. It is a unique panorama of the times, unlike anything any other Western photographer could capture during those years. Michael Ruetz sought to portray the faces of the people from that time in his photographs.