Erich Schutt

Since German reunification in 1990, his work has continued to draw interest and to feature in exhibition displays, as many of the subjects that he photographed, from the lignite-fuelled power station Vetschauvast on the edge of his home town to the traditional Sorbian artefacts and costumery that were still relatively mainstream during the middle decades of the twentieth century, retreat rapidly beyond living memory.

[4][6] As a school boy Schutt was already taking photographs round the town with the camera "Agfa Box" he had received as a particularly lavish birthday present,[1] until he handed it in to the Russian commander after the entire region fell under Soviet Military Administration in 1945.

[1][7] Schutt's career as a photo-journalist began in 1952 when he was approached by a local newspaper editor and accepted an invitation to become a part-time photo-reporter for the Brandenburgische Neueste Nachrichten [de].

The recently launched Brandenburgische Neueste Nachrichten was a stand-alone and modestly equipped publication, and on getting home to Vetschau later that day Schutt went straight back to the photography department of "Spreewald-Drogerie Petzold", the specialist shop where he was employed, in order to develop his film and print off the pictures, which he was able to deliver to his editor's desk the next day.

[8] Things changed after the Lausitzer Rundschau relocated its operations to Cottbus during the second half of 1952, even if the role of a staff "photo-journalist" remained somewhat "niche" among regional newspapers in the "German Democratic Republic" for many years.

Exhibitors and admirers of his work can make their own selection from at least sixty-five years' worth of Schutt's photographic output, carefully stored in his private collection of several thousand negatives, prints, and enlargements.

[6][9] Schutt's choice of subject matter, while to some extent driven by the requirements of publishers and for that reason characteristic of many of East Germany's better known photographers, is unusually wide-ranging.

Unsurprisingly, there is a focus on the mining industries and related energy production which featured prominently in the daily life of Lower Lusatia| (Niederlausitz, and to some extent still do.