Following an inner voice I decided
at one point in time to photograph people.
For weeks I walked through the streets
without daring to approach anyone.
Only if something in the face of the people
or in their habitus touched me, I dared to approach them,
asking them for the permission to take a photograph.
After the fall of the Wall,
I began to travel to the territory of the former GDR.
All I had with me was a sleeping bag and my camera.
I slept at the weirdest places,
always got up very early because of the morning cold,
and tried to document what was and
would soon be no more.
As usually, my intuitive reactions were stronger
than the concept I had in my mind.
And my images of people were far stronger
than anything else I photographed.
Most of the time I took pictures of children.
They had time, as did I,
and I was a little less shy of them than I was of adults.
I looked at my pictures, saw the sad children’s faces,
and at some point, later, I understood that
I had recognized something of myself in them,
from a time that had passed, and of which
I no longer wanted to know anything about.
My photographs, they seemed to emerge directly
from the past into the present time.
I had not photographed the present, but what once has been,
in a country that had more in common
with the country my parents came from,
than with the country where I was born.