Over the last year, to commemorate 30 years since the Berlin Wall fell this November, I’ve worked on a project with writer Malcolm Jack which saw us travel to Germany and beyond to meet former GDR citizens who received the begrüßungsgeld- typically a gift of 100DM welcome money from the West German government. We discovered what they each bought with the money and their tales of those first steps into the free world to spend it. For this project I produced portraits and also filmed interviews- all of which will be shown in the ‘Stories’ section of my website in the new year.

For now you can view the films on my vimeo, and below is a taster set of some of the individuals we met:

Graffiti artist Tasso, translator Connie Gunther, Susan Penquitt whose Barbie purchase has passed down to her young daughter, film executive Detlef Steimer, and Heike Noack who has made Scotland her home.