Literary-photographic project
Black-and-white photographs by Holger Goehler become the starting point for short prose miniatures on loss, desire, memory and decision. Between image and text, an associative space opens up for what is no longer, or not yet, visible.
Texts: Monika Groth
Photographs: Holger Goehler
A name on a yellowed letter, a lifelong blank and the luminous blue of his eyes, passed down through the generations: Isaacs Augen (Isaac’s Eyes).
A novel between history and fiction about my unknown Jewish grandfather: from Bulgaria via Paris to forced labour in Thuringia, where he was interned as a prisoner in Ruhla and a secret love bound him to my grandmother. His captivity in Thuringia forms the centre of the novel. It also tells of the consequences of this forbidden bond - for their son, my father, and for me, the granddaughter. Out of memory, research and imagination emerges a story about origins, silence and the traces that continue to work across generations.
The Art of Missing Oneself
Runa, in her mid-fifties, leaves her partner after sixteen years. Not angry, not relieved – she is simply done.
She tries to pull herself back into life through new encounters. But what follows is not a departure into freedom but a pattern of hope, projection and disappointment. Runa desires life, but as soon as she reaches for it, it recedes. Closeness, affirmation, freedom – everything seems within reach for a moment and then withdraws again.
Runa searches for anchors. In men, in encounters, in the hope that someone else will tell her who she is. But the harder she grasps, the clearer it becomes that none of it holds. Until she reaches a point where no encounter helps any more and, for the first time, she has to endure herself.
Eine Frau namens Tantalos (A Woman Named Tantalus) tells of longing, repetition and self-deception. Of a woman who must stop looking for herself in the eyes of others in order to find herself again.