Juxtaposing East and West Germany in photos

A boy flies a kite in the middle of the A42 freeway in Germany's Ruhr Valley, just before it is finished and opened for traffic. In the background, Duisburg's steelworks spit smoke into the skies. Rudi Meisel's 1979 photograph depicts West Germany's age of prosperity.

Waiting, separation, love - this image contains the most pressing issues for the divided German soul in 1980, nine years before the Berlin Wall would come down. The people in the picture are waiting for a subway train at the Alexanderplatz station in East Berlin. As a photojournalist, Rudi Meisel traveled extensively through both Germanys and captured what he saw.

Pictured is a modern apartment complex in the East German city of Halle-Neustadt in 1983. The photographer's perspective casts the buildings in an ironic light: Veiled by the rain they seem much less imposing, while the muddy, unfinished street becomes the focal point of the image.

Is this picture from East or West Germany? In Rudi Meisel's photos, it's often hard to tell. He was one of only a few photographers to be allowed to work in both Germanys prior to 1989. This picture was taken in 1980 at the site of the former Anhalter Bahnhof railway station in the Kreuzberg district of West Berlin. Damaged during World War II, the station was closed in 1952.

An elegantly dressed woman and a military tank: Two very different worlds come together in Rudi Meisel's photo, taken in 1980 in West Berlin on a national day dedicated to celebrating the military. During the Cold War, such weapons were put on show like trophies.

Grey streets, rain, East German monotony: Rudi Meisel took this photo on the corner of Schönhauser Allee and Dimitroffstrasse in East Berlin. In 1984, it was hard to imagine that Berlin's Prenzlauer Berg district would become the hippest part of the united city less than a decade later. The exhibition "Compatriots 1977-1987" runs through November 1 in the c/o Gallery in Berlin's Amerika Haus.