03. Seekers in Market Waste

03.01.01 / Old woman searches in the sweepings

[Photo taken: Hanover, May 1931]

03.01.02 / Walks past full boxes with empty ones

[Photo taken: Hanover, May 1931]

03.01.03 / In tow home

[Photo taken: Hanover, May 1931]

03.01.04 / In tow home (later addition)

[Photo taken: Hanover, May 1931]

03.02.01 / Another old woman is looking in the garbage

[Photo taken: Hanover, between January and March 1932]

03.02.02 / Her husband stows everything away

[Photo taken: Hanover, between January and March 1932]

03.02.03 / In threesome home

[Photo taken: Hanover, between January and March 1932]

03.03.01 / Combustible material (old woman with sack on her back)

[Photo taken: Hanover, 1930]

03.03.02 / Combustible material (old woman with sack on her back), (one year later)

"I followed up on this woman a year later because I really wanted to photograph her better again. And I achieved that. In spring, in oblique light, I met her and must say, I ambushed her directly to photograph her in front of a dark gateway in the light illuminated from the front. And she takes a wide-ranging step, still holding the heavy sack off her back a little with one hand, while the other hand holds the laid sack over her shoulder."
(Walter Ballhause 1981, in: Kulturmagazin: Presentation of the book "Überflüssige Menschen" and the author Walter Ballhause)

[Photo taken: Hanover, between January and March 1932]

03.04 / Potato picker

[Photo taken: Hanover, 1932]

03.05 / Potato picker

The following page in the album [no. 7] also picks up the motif of the weight pressing heavily on the back, this time the pictorial context is visible: on a cobbled square, a woman is looking for food in market waste. On her back she carries a large sack. Only the wheels of horse-drawn carts protrude into the picture at the upper corners. So the market traders have packed up, all the unspoilt goods have been loaded; the horse visible at the top left is already harnessed, wheels of carts at the left edge of the picture near her head and in the top right corner of the picture - behind her back - suggest danger. Is it Ballhause's allegory for the precarious living situation of the social class that this woman represents and that is threatened with being "under the wheels"? The very bright, partially overlit background (the ground on which the woman is standing) makes her dark silhouette stand out vividly. [...] The woman's dark coat, her feet as well as the bag placed next to her merge into a dark form, into which the bag with dark stripes also merges.
(Naumann, Christoph, in: Das Auge des Arbeiters. Arbeiterfotografie und Kunst um 1930, Leipzig 2014, p. 101)

[Photo taken: Klagesmarkt, Hanover, 1930]

03.06 / Useful for two old people

[Photo taken: Hanover, 1930]

03.07 / Grandma with paralyzed child in the trolley with rubbish

[Photo taken: Klagesmarkt, Hanover, May 1930]

03.07.01 / Paralyzed child in the buggy with rubbish

[Photo taken: Klagesmarkt, Hanover, May 1931]

03.08 / Home

[Photo taken: Hanover, July 1930]

03.09 / The misery

"My father was about to photograph this woman when she looked up. Not a word was spoken, there was only this look. My father's blood rushed to his head, he was so ashamed!"
(Ballhause, Rolf)

[Photo taken: Hanover, May 1931]