ALEXANDRA NAVRATIL

The video Silbersee consists of a sequence of 115 black and white and infrared photographs, that were taken by Dr. Walkow, a scientist at Agfa-Orwo in Bitterfeld, former East Germany in 1989 and 1990, just before the German reunification. While conducting research in order to find a substitute for the silver component of film, he became increasingly obsessed with photographing the so-called Silbersee. The lake had originally been a coal-mine at the end of the 19th century and had fueled the industrial development in the area. Throughout the 20th century it was used as a waste-water deposit by the surrounding factories until it became the most contaminated place in Germany by the 1990s. Dr. Walkow described the lake as an overwhelming presence in the lives of the inhabitants and held it responsible for his own personal crisis when moving to the area. The text on the photographs contemplates on the slow violence of chemical contamination.

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The series of prints made in different printing layers speculate on the possibility of a landscape becoming photosensitive through constant contamination from disposed chemicals containing silver halides originating from the production of film. The industrial past of a region becomes embodied in the image of the land.

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