ABOUT

Seventy five years after the end of World War 2 and 30 years after reunification, Germany is finding itself assaulted by right-wing extremists again. The aughts saw a series of killings that German police quickly dismissed as “döner murders” — only to find that they had in fact been committed by a group that called itself National Socialist Underground.

It might seem strange to state that living in the United States for the past 20 years for me has vastly increased the relevance of what is at stake in Germany’s second attempt to establish and maintain a democratic republic. But the reality is that being physically removed from the country I was born in has had me engage with Germany a lot more closely than I think I would have had I stayed. Physical distance resulted in mental distance, and after a while, something in me rebelled against that mental distance. Especially in light of Germany’s Nazi past, being away felt too much like trying not to be connected to a historical burden that I cannot deny. At the same time, the Germany that revealed itself in the 2000s was a lot different than the one I had grown up in. There were all the neo-Nazis crawling out of their holes. But there was also the Germany that would welcome hundreds of thousands of refugees in 2015, the Germany where the public sphere would see many citizens of migratory background play a major role — unlike the (West) Germany that I had grown up in.

I didn’t set out to make Vaterland when I started photographing in early 2017. But in the German federal elections that year the far-right AfD ended up becoming the largest opposition party, which caused enormous outrage in me. That outrage only grew as parts of the conservative spectrum belittled the danger that I have been perceiving the country to be in. I’m neither a journalist nor a documentarian. With Vaterland, I don’t attempt to be either one of these. I intend the book to be what in German is called a Stimmungsbild — a metaphorical image expressing a mood. I don’t have any explanations for what I see in Germany. But for sure I know how I feel. Vaterland is an expression of my unease, of my worries, of my upset, of my realization to what extent Germany and its past are an integral part of my own life.