Ute Mahler and Werner Mahler rank among the most significant figures in German photography—through their photographic work, their teaching, and as co-founders of the renowned Ostkreuz Agency and the Ostkreuzschule für Fotografie. Monalisen der Vorstädte ("Monalisas of the Suburbs", 2008–2010) is their first collaborative project. In the suburbs of Reykjavík, Liverpool, Minsk, Berlin, and Florence, they encounter young women who have outgrown childhood and are searching for themselves and their place in the world.

When Ute and Werner Mahler began working on their first joint project, they had already been a couple for more than forty years and each could look back on a distinguished photographic career—both in the German Democratic Republic, where they grew up, and in the period following the German reunification. Both had studied photography in Leipzig and worked as freelance photographers, undertaking commissions as well as pursuing their own subjects.

In 1990, together with five other leading photographers from the GDR, they founded the renowned Ostkreuz Agency. For decades, each had assisted the other whenever one “had a job,” yet it was only with their self-initiated project Monalisen der Vorstädte that their collaboration evolved into a true joint undertaking—and thus into a new form of working together.