“Searching for remnants of the Berlin Wall, one realises that our collective memory still permeates a few stigmas and other marks left by humanity. This book is about finding details and testimonies fossilised in space and time. What has become of those surveillance zones which were once under tight security? Those No Man’s Lands which were cut off, caught between two worlds, concrete bound? The memory of a past epoch is forever inscribed in our present-day society. Through an age-long span of observation, one’s vision records everyday life in which the most commonplace aspects of our lives have become a natural part of the urbanisation of cities. We are now faced with a line cutting across History, and because it has been altered with the patina of time, it can no longer be seen. A ghost reigns over the memory of mankind like a scar. This publication sheds light on this scar in History: the Berlin Wall before and after its demolition. The photographs, in black and white or in colour, are followed by a text expressing the photographer’s viewpoint, like a red thread inscribing this work within a reflection on memory and History.”
JEAN-NOËL JEANNENEY, President of the National Library of France and cofounder of the monthly magazine L’Histoire.