Baldiga

Jürgen Baldiga, the son of a miner from Essen, has just moved to the city in 1979 and decides to become an artist. He works as a hustler and cook, writes poems and a diary. With his HIV infection, he discovers photography in 1984. His pictures are intended to stop time and capture reality: They show his friends and lovers, wild sex and life on the street and, time and again, the lusty faggots of the gay club SchwuZ, who become his family of choice. Between despair and desire, rebellion and an irrepressible will to survive, Baldiga becomes a chronicler of West Berlin's subculture in the face of his own imminent death. When he died in 1993 at the age of 34, he left behind thousands of photographs and 40 diaries - a unique artistic legacy.