Türme der Gastarbeiter: The Representation of Postwar Housing and the Migrant Inhabitants in Photography

Abstract

Focusing on the city of Cologne and its postwar history, this paper investigates the contradicting forms of the production, use, and circulation of photography that are employed in representing the new image of the modern city and of the migrant-dweller. The photographic exclusion of migrant inhabitants from the official documentary photographs of the new towers built as workers’ housing contradicts the fact that those towers were defined as urban landmarks to represent the new image of Cologne and their color and black & white photographs were widely publicized. A comparison of two photography genres –documentary and mise en scène– in the analysis reveals how the framing of architectural photographs of the housing estates and the self-images staged by migrant workers in public space generated simultaneous yet disengaged narratives in architecture and photography.