Late Silence
 
This piece of work contains large-sized portraits of persons who used to live in children’s homes. The installation discusses the topic of former residents of German educational children’s homes between 1950 and 1970. The children were trapped within a rigid moral concept of the time and had to live under unimaginably terms and conditions on the brink of society: between postwar period and economic miracle.
 
The persons of the monumental, larger-than-life pictures look into the light and their lives. They stay apart and avoid the observer’s look. The dissolving landscape in the background as well as the peoples clothing does not give us any information about their social context. The key to understanding the context is the soundtrack of the original voices: they report of the day, when they were brought to the children’s homes - the visitor is able to listen via headphones. Mostly the protagonists speak about this day several times, trying to explain the reasons for their "committal."
 
This piece of work is focused on a moment of remembrance, a timeless momentum of absolute continuity causing everything moving to resign. Moreover it shows the permanent trail the experience has left in the biographies of every single one of them. The state of their infanthood is described as fragile and vulnerable: it has created a moment of retrospection, a return to their formative experience of their living conditions and at the same time it functions as an echo of those who still want to discuss about locked children’s homes and run-down kids, again, after 50 years.