In 1991 Hans Pieler began a photographic exploration of ordinary day-to-day living in Germany's five new Lander (states), bringing the eye of an ethnographer to bear on his subject. His idea was to see whether the circumstances and habits of everyday life in the People's Republic of Germany were disappearing, or whether they were continuing to exist, to assert themselves, in the new conditions. The photographs were taken in Berlin (Prenzlauer Berg, Marzahn, Lichtenberg, Mahlsdorf), Cottbus, Werdau, Zwickau, Falkensee and smaller communities. What he was looking at was the interior and exterior world of private everyday life: the do-it-yourself kitchen, patio, swimming pool. His theme was the inside face of Germany, the desire to protect one's privacy against a State that tried constantly to interfere harshly in private life. In contemporary terms, one might say that Hans Pieler photographed the dream world, the "Hollywood", of the man in the street, deliberately using cinematographic as well as photographic techniques. He used light and lens the way film-makers use cinemascope: the figures in his photos appear to be placed in front of a screen.

Hans Pieler was born in 1951, in Bielefeld.