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Protocolls

Series of staged photos for a book publication and exhibition.

Project Description:

The photos of the series “Protocolls” are inspired by book “Vernehmungsprotokolle” by the author Juergen Fuchs who was jailed and interrogated in the secret prison of the Stasi in East Berlin in 1977.  Fuchs was one of the key figures in the peaceful revolution in Germany that lead to the fall of the Berlin wall 1989.  In order to break his free will the Stasi took from him his most precious tool of expression: his pencil and paper.  Placed in an isolated cell, with no contact to the outer world, to his family and friends, Fuchs took on a new strategy to stay sane. With his bare finger he wrote virtual texts in the air before him.  The Stasi thought, that he was well on his way to go insane, but in contrast his virtual-writing was a method of memorizing the cruel methods of psychological torture they were forcing on him.  After the Stasi did not accomplish to destroy the personality of Juergen Fuchs, they expelled him to west Berlin, where within a couple of weeks he wrote his book about the secret interrogations of the Stasi.  This text is a very moving and personal description of the his situation in prison.  The Stasi kept on harassing him until 89.  Fuchs died in 1999 from a seldom cancer.  He suspected that they poisoned him with radiation.

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