|
In 1990-shortly after the Berlin Wall came down, an architect friend of mine gave me a call. He was renovating a house for local government and had a found an appartment that had been lived in by an old woman. She had died recently and the appartment had been locked up and left untouched.
|
She had been found, ill, by a neighbour who had called an ambulance. The form of her body could still be seen where she had wrapped herself in the blanket and waited for the ambulance. She never came back and so everything lies exposed waiting for her return and unprepared for foreign inspection, a private banality with all its habits, shortcomings and shortcuts and whose sense had come to an end. | At her advanced age (82), she had no family and no friends,as no one had appeared to notice her passing. She had lived the last few years in primitive hygenic circumstances, doing her crosswords. On full moon nights she would sing the female parts of popular Operettas out of her kitchen window. | I came in, turned right and started to photograph the scenes of her life; the bed, the desk, the trinkets and photo of her mother, the window, the kitchen, the wash place and back to the door. I moved anti-clockwise around the appartment which was in the form of a long rectangle with one window at the end, one in the kitchen and one tiny one over the sink. I used this form for the exhibiton in Berlin which was called "Rememberances" and was part of a group show in 1996. This show uses the same form.
michael hughes in june, 1999. |
 |
|||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
 |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |