At the same time, it felt like travelling back in time, especially in the countryside and villages. There were roads lined with wild flowers, rustic gardens, and village streets like I remembered from my childhood but now so rare in the West. I find the term “home” very elusive, but in these August days in the GDR, I often had a homey feeling, and a sense of belonging, yet this also included a certain distance, as if I were looking in from outside.
After the summer I returned to France and put away the negatives; I didn’t even make contact prints of most of them. Indeed, that’s why I’m seeing or literally discovering these pictures for the first time today."
Brigitte Bauer (Arles, Frankreich)