Cowboys: East Germany
A project spanning more than a decade exploring the adopted identities of a people from the former East of Germany who identify as cowboys.
Existing as a rebellious response to aspects of Communism – an imagining of freedom and individualism – it's been re-imagined and held onto as a response to the perceived ills of Capitalism.
A film and several images are in the permanent collection of The Wittliff Collections at Texas State University.
Cowboys: East Germany examines the constructed identities and practices of the American Western Cowboy and “cowboy lifestyle” as taken up and lived by the people of the former East Germany. From 1961 to 1989, The Wall, separates East Germany, the Deutsches Democratic Republic (DDR) from West Germany and on a global scale, physically demarcating the Cold War’s boundary separating the Communist East from the Capitalist West. Developing behind “The Wall,” the idea of Cowboy represents a type of freedom and individualism for East Germans, as imagined in the lifestyle of the cowboy. Emerging from the shadows of Communism, the adopted – and well-adapted – cowboy lifestyle re-imagines the cowboy ethos as agency to hold on to what is seen as good from Communism and eschew perceived ills of Capitalism. Values the East German cowboys wish to retain and “bring over” from their communist past – like helping one’s neighbor, a non-materialist rural life, family values, and attachment to the land and working with animals – are reinterpreted as “cowboy” values from an imagined American West.