Photographs with Commentary
Men are sitting in a group. Perhaps it’s one man’s birthday, or they are celebrating Christmas. They decide to take a photograph as a memento. But then they realize something is wrong – if they take a photograph, it might appear to be an ordinary souvenir. But nothing is normal or ordinary – quite the opposite.
For these men, in their own description, are the “slaves of the 20th century,” whose “youth was destroyed.” Far from home and their families, they are “without love” and their barracks are a “villa of tears.”
They decide to record their emotions in writing – on a small placard, a bag, whatever they find at hand. And then they finally take the photograph.
Four of these “photographs with commentary” were selected for the publicity for the exhibition. They were taken by forced laborers from Belgium, France and Czechoslovakia, who unlike the forced laborers from Poland and the Soviet Union were permitted to own cameras. With their inscriptions on the photographs, the forced laborers present themselves to present-day Berlin subway passengers as self-aware individuals who are both reflecting upon and condemning their circumstances.