I worked as photographer on cemeteries all over Europe for a scientific project on World War I which ended in 2018 for 100 years. When walking around on these old cemeteries more and more apparently abandoned benches and chairs next to graves came to my attention. They were left, decaying, fallen out of time and some even blend into the background and their environment.
Where are those people gone who carried these benches and chairs to the graves? Who sat on them? How long have they been in dialogue with their loved ones in the hereafter? How long did they wait there, waited until they, too, found eternity?
Time, transience, light, shadow, rituals, ceremonies, loneliness, despair, consolation – vocabulary as from poems by Rainer Maria Rilke, William Blake, Arseny Tarkovsky – but these photographs are reality, now, here and today.
Who will one day wait for us to meet again? In these times of terror, flight, fading safety? A war which is over for a 100 years seems to be so long ago, especially regarding all actual wars and conflicts. 100 years of mourning.
To capture this breath of eternity I decided to use pure monochrom photography.
This series in October 2018 was awarded with an “honorable mention” by the International Photography Awards, New York.
The majority of the pictures were taken with a Leica Monochrom, using a 35mm Leica lens.
This series in October 2018 was awarded with an “honorable mention” by the International Photography Awards, New York.