Images of the socially discarded. Men and women in black waiting for death. Street scenes. Sitting on stone steps, their heads in their hands, unconscious of everyday proletarian life. The men most likely still with a semblance of sprightliness, leaning on the obligatory stick. Ballhause does not meet the eyes of these people. He does not take away from them what would otherwise be transmitted as overpowering shame.

(Beicken, Peter, in: Solidarisches Sehen oder Weimars Ende in Hannover. Der Arbeiterfotograf Walter Ballhause, in: Die Horen, 27th year, vol. 2 (1982), issue 126, p. 63–70)