It would be wrong to say these photographs of the British miners' strike of 1984–1985 were the product of a chance encounter. They were taken because it is a subject that lies close to my heart. I have had strong ties to the UK mining community ever since my earliest childhood. I was born in Llanelli in South Wales in 1960 and spent the first five years of my life there — a circumstance that continues to shape my identity to this very day.

Inaugurations of the 44th and the 45th presidents of the United States of America.

1986 - Back to the present. In 1986, the decade was halfway over. In April, the reactor in Chernobyl melted down, the Cold War was coming to an end, Helmut Kohl was chancellor, AIDS was just being perceived as a pandemic threat in Germany, and the affluent society of the Federal Republic of Germany was beginning to view consumption as a leisure activity.

Are we Jewish Russians? German Jews? Both? Many emigrants from the former Soviet Union were looking for a new home here - and had to find a new identity. This book shows fascinating photos of arriving and adapting in foreign Germany.

As a young photographer Michael Kerstgens comes to Mühlhausen. "I had never seen such a city before," he says. And so he takes unbiased photos of the people between the fall of the Berlin Wall and German unity.

The pictures Kerstgens took more than 25 years ago in Moscow in the streets, in shops and while visiting various institutions show the harshness, desolation and powerlessness, anger and despair of the discouraged people.

1983, Trotting race track Gelsenkirchen/Ruhrarea in Germany.