Andreas Trogisch – Vineta 1985/1990 (signed)

Peperoni Books 2016

“Vineta” consists of two series of pictures from the declining GDR: portraits from 1985 and cityscapes from 1990, the last months before reunification.

“Vineta, that was a kind of East Atlantis. In the polytechnic high schools of the GDR, every child knew the legend of the city that sank in the Baltic Sea. that had to go down. Because Vineta’s inhabitants had been ungrateful. They didn’t appreciate what they had. Even a last urgent warning before their own end hit the Vineter in the cool Baltic Sea wind. In the end, a storm tide tore the city down to the bottom of the sea with man and mouse. To this day my Spökenkieker, looking at Vineta deep down on the ground, being able to hear the beating of the golden church bells in the sound of the waves. […] The Vineters disregarded what they had. Not her fault. The culprit was the great alienation with one’s own country. The little inner freedom that everyone had staked out like a little garden was to blame. A freedom that counted for more than a valid passport. A bond among those who stayed here, a letting go of those fleeing, a longing for the other, of which one did not really know what that was supposed to be.”
(From the accompanying text by Anja Maier)