The Shortlist of the Alfred Fried Photography Award 2015
ECHOLAND, Wrestling with Europe
There is an echo in Europe. Essentially there are many echoes. At the moment they do fall silent, but they will never vanish completely. It is the sound from the battlefields, the millions of dead individuals, countless bombs and grenades.
The echoes do not want to pass away.
It appears that the Great Wars, les Grande Guerres, die Großen Kriege, are gone. The massacres at Verdun, Stalingrad and the Seelow Heights, the arming of the Cold War and the replacement wars around the globe. But from time to time, the echoes of destruction and death return to Europe, to Hungary, to Bosnia and the Kosovo. A hundred years after the First World War, they are looking for a new playground, they are returning to the EU borders in Greece and to the beaches of Lampedusa, to the refugee camps in Calais. The echoes of wrestling about Europe do not vanish. Under immense pain, Europe has found its way from bloody nationalism to collective action.
You can listen to the echoes even in the European Parliament. It is a place where people are wrestling with Europe. Quasi the Clausewitz postulate turned around, “Diplomacy is the continuation of war with different instruments.” The members of parliament wrestle about ideas, sentences, commas, about building coalitions. It is still a long journey. And on each step of this journey you will hear the echoes which run like a thread through Europe, and they endanger the peace. The wrestling is still going on, in the landscape, in the parliament. It’s far from over.
ECHOLAND.
During his work on the Echoland project, Glaescher spent a lot of time in the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg. For the second series, he travelled to places where one can still see the wrestling about Europe in the landscape. From the battlefields of Verdun, via the Wolfsschanze in Poland and the graveyards of Srebrenica.
There is an echo in Europe. Essentially there are many echoes. At the moment they do fall silent, but they will never vanish completely. It is the sound from the battlefields, the millions of dead individuals, countless bombs and grenades.
The echoes do not want to pass away.
It appears that the Great Wars, les Grande Guerres, die Großen Kriege, are gone. The massacres at Verdun, Stalingrad and the Seelow Heights, the arming of the Cold War and the replacement wars around the globe. But from time to time, the echoes of destruction and death return to Europe, to Hungary, to Bosnia and the Kosovo. A hundred years after the First World War, they are looking for a new playground, they are returning to the EU borders in Greece and to the beaches of Lampedusa, to the refugee camps in Calais. The echoes of wrestling about Europe do not vanish. Under immense pain, Europe has found its way from bloody nationalism to collective action.
You can listen to the echoes even in the European Parliament. It is a place where people are wrestling with Europe. Quasi the Clausewitz postulate turned around, “Diplomacy is the continuation of war with different instruments.” The members of parliament wrestle about ideas, sentences, commas, about building coalitions. It is still a long journey. And on each step of this journey you will hear the echoes which run like a thread through Europe, and they endanger the peace. The wrestling is still going on, in the landscape, in the parliament. It’s far from over.
ECHOLAND.
During his work on the Echoland project, Glaescher spent a lot of time in the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg. For the second series, he travelled to places where one can still see the wrestling about Europe in the landscape. From the battlefields of Verdun, via the Wolfsschanze in Poland and the graveyards of Srebrenica.
