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As the granddaughter of a family from Sudetenland, Yvonne Most pursues her
family roots photographically. In doing so, she discovers connections to collective
experiences from traces of memory and historical research. Her photo series
opens up a new view onto a region, a landscape with deeps scars, which is
constantly evolving. The photographer is interested in the incomplete, the
imperfections, and what happens or does not happen on the periphery. The
photo series raises questions about the artist's own biography and enables the
viewer to reflect on his or her need for an old and new homeland.
“Yvonne Most manages to create feelings of longing, stories, historicity, and security
from the dialogue between still lifes, landscapes and portraits. Her work describes
an exploration and also represents a journey through time. The photographer
presents her own pictures alongside historical black and white photographs taken by
Sudeten German amateur photographer Josef Grossmann (1891–1970) in the
1920s and 1930s. In doing so, she refers to a time in which the world of mountains,
forests, and landscapes seems untouched, safe and sound. Grossmann’s photographs, however, do not just provide a look at a
world whose reality would soon change. The pain that comes from separation and leaving one’s homeland is indirectly brought
to mind in a new context through the mixture of old and new. Grossmann’s distanced view of the web of emotions that can be
summed up under the term “homeland” is embedded by Yvonne Most into a network of direct confrontation with people. She
shows us the people who suffered the loss and who carry its memory with them. Both the people and the landscape
symbolize scars – places that no longer exist; people who had to leave; suffering, grief, expulsion, and their traces. In contrast
to Grossmann’s photographs, Yvonne Most tries to grasp these missing parts and to deal with them as the descendant of a
dying generation.” –from the text by Felix Hoffmann Published by Kehrer Verlag
by Yvonne Most