A photograph by Jonas Feige
A photograph by Jonas Feige
A photograph by Jonas Feige
A photograph by Jonas Feige
A photograph by Jonas Feige
A photograph by Jonas Feige
A photograph by Jonas Feige
A photograph by Jonas Feige
A photograph by Jonas Feige
A photograph by Jonas Feige
A photograph by Jonas Feige
A photograph by Jonas Feige

Untitled (work in progress)

2022-

For centuries the small town of Weimar was home to some of Germany’s most prominent poets, philosophers, musicians and artists. Yet it is also here, only a few kilometers outside the city gates, on the Ettersberg where Goethe is said to have wandered, where the National Socialists built Buchenwald, one of the largest concentration camps on German soil. “Nowhere is the most beautiful and sublime that people have achieved so close to the most evil and terrible that they have committed.” (Ivan Ivanji)

In this work, I pursue the latent energies of Weimar and Buchenwald, two places that are today the destination of countless school trips. I photograph the young visitors, who are often confronted for the first time with the weight of the past and who are asked to find a way of living with this heritage. As they move through these spaces in a state of curiosity and trepidation, I ponder the idea of ​​repetition: the repeated visits to former concentration camps on the one hand, and the hope of preventing another kind of repetition on the other: that of history itself.

Consistent with themes found in my previous work, this project is at once a meditation on the interweaving of past, present and future and an observation of a younger generation confronting the burden, but also potential, of history.