Do Not Refreeze – Photography Behind the Berlin Wall The Cornerhouse, Manchester until 17th June

This singular and sizeable exhibition showcases work by no fewer than nine East German photographers made when their homeland was part of the Eastern Bloc. The show is rich, diverse and highly recommended.

Given the cultural apartheid of the period, comparisons with better known western artists are inevitable. Arno Fischer’s lonely pictures of Berlin convey a feeling of alienation as expertly as anything by Robert Frank, even when photographing crowds. Evelyn Richter’s frames within frames approach to Receptionist in the Town Hall 1975 or Tram 1972 evoke a contemporaneous Friedlander, and her poetic images of people in art galleries could well have inspired (West Germany’s) Thomas Struth to pursue the same subject. Helga Paris is a kind of dark Doisneau or Atget, whose 1980s work evokes a much earlier period. Gundula Schulze Eldowy, a remarkable artist who works in starkly divergent series, could be Diane Arbus (Nudes), Bill Brandt (Work) and Michael Kenna (Landscapes) all rolled into one.

Ursula Arnold was making surreptitious pictures of people on public transport before Walker Evans’ clandestine subway pictures were published, and her images are as claustrophobic as his are lonely. While other photographers here tackled similar subjects, the exhibition is in no way suggestive of a movement or a homogenous group. On the contrary, the highly mature, often fascinating and extremely varied work on show here reminds us that the standard, accepted “history of photography” is merely a narrow view of a much broader, richer legacy than any of us can really imagine. (Review by Simon Bowcock)