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Landscapes & Memory

by Jo Röttger

Photographs: Jo Röttger

Text: Ansgar Reiß und Martin Bayer

Publisher: Peperoni Books

104 pages

Pictures: 30 colour illustrations

Year: 2013

ISBN: 978-3-941825-48-2

Price: 35 €

Comments: 30 x 25,2 cm; Hardcover; German and English

Germany / Afghanistan / Germany.
30 Photographs by Jo Roettger.

Jo Röttger about the three stations of his project:

Germany, August 2010
The Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide was once a hunting ground of the German Emperor and the nobility. During the Third Reich it was annexed by the German Armed Forces as a military training area. Today, all soldiers of the Bundeswehr are prepared here for combat missions abroad.

Afghanistan, October to November 2010
Theodor Fontane already described the invincibility of this so wild and primary landscape in 1859 in his poem »The Tragedy of Afghanistan«. It ends with the lines: Those who should hear, they‘ll hear nevermore, Destroyed, dispersed is the proud host of yore; With thirteen thousand their trail they began. Only one man returned from Afghanistan. The German soldiers, who I accompanied, were stationed near to the town of Masar-e Sharif at the foot of the Hindu Kush (Camp Marmal) and in Fayzabad in the far north-east of Afghanistan (Badakhshan Province).

Germany, May 2011
The Mountain Infantry Battalion 232 is stationed in Bischofswiesen, at the feet of the Watzmann and Königssee. A legend says that the Berchtesgadener Land was once ruled by the brutal King Wazemann who, together with his family, spread fear and tyranny throughout the land. When he once trampled on a farmer’s family with his horse, the farmer’s wife begged God to punish him and his family, after which the earth opened up, spat fire and turned the King, his wife and his children into stone. the legend goes on to say that the Königssee was formed from the blood collected from the bodies of the royal family. The pictures were taken three weeks after the soldiers had arrived back at their base from Afghanistan.

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