Garcías Tochter – Alina Simmelbauer
Garcías Tochter (“García’s daughter”) is a book documenting the project of the same title by German photographer Alina Simmelbauer:
Around 190,000 migrant workers studied or worked from 1962 to 1990 in the GDR, the socialist brother state. When their work contract expired, they were sent back to their home countries. For many there is something besides their own work history that connects them today with Germany: their children.
Alina Simmelbauer is herself a daughter of a former contract worker who had stayed in the GDR in the early 1980s. However, she first met him only in 2011 in Cuba. Since then she has been searching for people whose family histories resemble hers. In this search she met many children who grew up behind a veil of secrecy; without fathers or knowledge about their whereabouts.
A combination of Suisse Int’l and Archive is used throughout the book. Archival images are mixed with photographs of the artist. See more images on arc’s website.
