Abandoned Locations

Germany 2006–2014

Jeanne Fredac

Jeanne Fredac’s pictures are testimonies to bygone times. Like a rag collector, she tracks down locations that slipped out of our collective consciousness long ago. Those who know are aware of the places and of the time when these structures housed the living and dying. Her photographs, ostensibly so simple, are taken to the verge of perfection and question the ways in which we deal with history.
Jeanne’s perspective is that of an outsider. Politically aware, she is concerned with the thoughts and hopes these locations concealed until the late 1980s. At the same time, she poses the question as to the finite nature of ideas – those of my generation, who were born on the other side of the Wall, and those who will carry today when their time has come. The contradiction between the photographs’ aesthetic form and their morbid content is thereby resolved. The light at the end of the tunnel does not always have to be that of an oncoming train.

Thomas Hausstein