14 There is a narrative structure to both Margit Emmrich’s study of puberty and her series Berlin in Spring. In other groups of work, though, she pursues a comparative approach. In 1972/73, for example, she encouraged students in the 7th and 8th grade at a school in Leipzig’s Stötteritz neighbourhood to take two self-portraits of themselves a year apart using the camera’s self-timer. These were integrated into her degree book project. Their poses were freely chosen. Their position was marked by a chalk circle. The photographer was not herself present when the picture was taken. She stated that she was interested in exploring the “status of visual appearance […] within a group […] at a specific [historical] point in time,” expressed in aspects “such as bodily shape, clothing, hairstyle, etc. […] What do posture, gaze and gesture tell us about someone between childhood and adulthood, the attempts to fit in, the independence, the different temperaments? What do I find out about the development of personalities, what has stayed the same, and what has changed by repeating the portraits one year later?”6 In 2011/12, almost 40 years later, the photographer repeated this experiment in the same place, once again with students from the 7th and 8th grade. Another example of this kind of comparative study by Margit Emmrich are the Wohnzimmerporträts [living room portraits] taken in colour in the mid-1970s, using an old wooden large-format camera (p. 32–38). For Emmrich it was important to depict as broad a swath from the population as possible. This was true of the professions as well as the age of the people depicted. This group of works was inspired by a project from the research group for colour photography in the Central Commission for Photography [Zentrale Kommission Fotografie] led by Wolfgang G. Schröter. Most of the photographs were taken in Leipzig, some others in the Magdeburger Börde region, where the photographer had briefly supervised a group of students during her training at the HGB. The method became popular. A few years later, Herlinde Koelbl took a look inside West German living rooms, published in 1980 under the title Das deutsche Wohnzimmer [The German Living Room]. Margit Emmrich Die Zeit dazwischen. Dokumente zur Pubertät, 1974 (unveröffentlicht) The Intervening Time. Documents on puberty, 1974 (unpublished)
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