East German landscape photo book
120 pages
21 x 25 cm
Open swiss binding
First Edition of 500 copies
2017
Pictures of landscapes, Generally I find them calming. When it comes to the pictures in Rainer Sioda's FACK series, however, that feeling refuses to materialise. This is less due to the barren Brandenburg countryside than it is to the traces left by its inhabitants, which the photographer presents us with pitilessly. What are these strange remnants? Coloured slurry left by paintball combatants in a pine forest, cars that look like armoured personnel carriers, and graffiti which, in its open, brutal expression, lacks any trace of street-art wit. 'There is no peaceful hinterland' reads one of the inscriptions on the wall of a residential block. Hinterland? If we take the military meaning of the word, the country appears to be in a state of war. Who the aggression is directed against is not always clear. My guess is against everything and nothing, against everything foreign, and against itself. The hinteland-dwelling masculine world is evidently in a serious crisis. This is not something which is particularly easy to stomach in this concentrated form - fortunately for us viewers, Sioda brings the necessary level of irony with him. The images thus simultaneously document and transcend time. With a conceptual stringency, Sioda recounts his story of the countryside and (invisible) people at a time of uncertainty and defiant hatred paired with a trace of self-pity (inscription: 'I have always loved you'). The photo series is permeated by a silence that crescendos to despair and creates an icy emotional chill. I catch myself wishing for a fresh breeze to blow over our heads and brighten the view - out over the Brandenburg landscape in its pure and honest beauty.
