Warmest Colors of the Cold War: Thomas Dworzak and the Iron Curtain
Inspired by the unseen color images of the Magnum archive, Thomas Dworzak documents the remnants of history on the Bavarian-Czech border
This fall, as part of “A World in Color,” an ongoing project between Magnum, Fujifilm and MPP to start digitizing the 650,000 color slides from the Magnum archive in Paris, Thomas Dworzak and Cristina de Middel were given carte blanche to curate a selection of images made by Magnum photographers in Germany over the second half of the 20th century.
Dworzak was intrigued by the quirkiness of Bavaria, where he grew up in the 80s, documented by his Magnum predecessors. Traveling to the same region decades later, he set out to capture traces of history from what he remembers as a profoundly divided area, using a Fujifilm GFX 100RF.
Former Iron Curtain at the Bavarian-Czech border.
Thomas Dworzak: When I was given access to the incredible German archive of unseen outtakes by my Magnum photographer predecessors, I was blown away by the playful intimacy and warmth they shared with their subjects. Beyond Berlin — with its obvious allure as a divided and isolated city — they were mostly drawn to the charm, eccentricity, and quirkiness of Bavaria, and especially the American troops stationed there. At the height of the Cold War in the 1970s and 1980s, those troops guarded the Iron Curtain.
I grew up in the 1980s, in a small Bavarian town near the Czechoslovak border. We lived in permanent worry and fear of a possible “Russian” (Warsaw Pact) invasion. Looking at their pictures, I discovered a world I knew existed, a few dozen kilometres down the road. But we didn’t have much access or contact with the Americans.
"I traveled the length of the now open Bavarian–Czech border, searching for traces of the American presence and echoes of that profoundly divided area."
- Thomas Dworzak
Revisiting these places decades later, I set out to find what remains of this once-impenetrable and intimidating frontier — a border that once felt like the end of the world. Now it is again the center of Europe.
I traveled the length of the now open Bavarian–Czech border, searching for traces of the American presence and echoes of that profoundly divided area. I’ve always shied away from using medium format, or anything but small cameras, but the spectacularly beautiful, versatile, fast and discreet GFX 100RF was a perfect introduction.
Cham, Bavaria, 8.13.2025
Discover more from“A World in Color” here.
