Der weiße Fleck/ The White Spot- DDR Hohenschönhausen
In 2018, I published the book "Der weiße Fleck/The White Spot. DDR Hohenschönhausen" published by Hirnkost Verlag.
I spent a year interviewing and photographing former prisoners and Stasi officers of the GDR regime. The work illustrates how closely political ideology is linked to the understanding of individual freedom.
I show the traces of the former Ministry of State Security of the GDR. The title of the book refers to the depiction of the highly secret headquarters of the MfS in East Berlin city maps as a white area without streets, squares or buildings. Today, this area is just as accessible as the former Stasi remand prison in Hohenschönhausen. Both sites have been opened up as memorials and museums. I documented the former ministerial floor of the MfS headquarters as well as the oppressive cells of the prison, which were used to keep people in solitary confinement and make them compliant. I show the photographs of these places of perpetrators, devoid of people and all their clinical sterility, and demonstrate, as it were, the banality of bureaucracy in the former Ministry for State Security.
The book was divided into two parts: an extensive picture section that portrays the present and an interview section that focuses on the past.
In German and English language.
224 pages
translation: Caitlin Hahn
Layout: ItYt https://www.ityt.de/
ISBN: 978-3-945398-96-8