Open book spread with abstract architectural image on left and classical engraving on right.
Open book spread with blank left page and black and white photograph of stairs carved into a mountain on right page.
A white house with boarded windows and smoke damage above them in black and white.
Dark oval shape on light ground with curved white pathways separating dark soil patches.
Misty forest landscape with fallen logs spread across two facing pages of an open book.
Multiple translucent mesh panels suspended over earthen ground near a concrete structure.
Open book spread with two black and white artworks: left page shows a figure drawing, right page displays abstract graffiti-like marks and text.
Open book displaying a black and white photograph of a large open space covered with cobblestone.
A stark black and white photograph of a house with geometric angles casting dramatic shadows on a white wall.
Open book showing blank left page and black and white photograph on right page of a baroque mirror and paintings of royalty in its reflection.
Open book displaying two black and white architectural photographs side by side.
Metal mesh protecting an urban balcony, reminiscent of a human figure.
Open book publication displaying black and white photograph of angular architectural form against white page.
Open book with blank left page and black and white photograph of a wooden plank leading over a creek on right.
A large dark space looms behind barbed wire lines in this black and white photograph.
Bare tree stands alone in vast, flat agricultural landscape, black and white photograph.
Open book displaying black and white landscape photograph of open landscape with large shadows across two pages.

This Soil We Have Created For Ourselves

This Soil We Have Created For Ourselves looks at Germany as a landscape haunted by its own history. The project traces the echoes of bygone myths, ideologies, and utopias through sites of memory, museums, and monuments, where the past is preserved, shaped, and presented as history, and through the everyday surroundings of German towns and villages.

At a time when calls for national identity and a clearly defined Heimat have grown louder, the work confronts the nationalist myth of a sacred homeland: the notion, common to all nationalisms, that a land has belonged to a people since time immemorial. The shadows of the past take on new form here, encroaching, unresolved, never fully closed. The project asks what this complicated relationship to history means for the present, and what potential it holds for Germany's future.

“This Soil is an investigation of sites of memory and yet its strength lies in not relying on a linear re-telling of events. It invites us to sense the significance of what we see before us and in doing so, attempts to strike a difficult balance between bringing attention to Germany’s dark past, while also refusing to give it honour or pay homage.” — Lucy Rogers, C4 Journal

“Feige's book is a reminder that reminders are not history. They are propositions that wrangle us back from the complacency of believing that we understand history when it emerges like another dirty phoenix with a yearning for absolutes when we expect it least but subconsciously desire it the most.” — Brad Feuerhelm on American Suburb X/Patreon

published by Kominek Books in 2021