“Like beached whales the blockhouses in Uta Kogelsberger’s photographs are washed up on the sand. Functionless, decaying, desolate they are reabsorbed into the landscape.
The bunkers were built on the beaches of Normandy and England as defensive structures in World War II. Manned with soldiers on the lookout for invaders, they are the 20th century equivalent of medieval fortresses or castles. But the structure has been reduced to a functional minimum – both threat and shelter.
Kogelsberger re-examines these buildings in her photographs. Taken at night with artificial lighting and long exposures she plays a game of hide and seek, catching these structures off-guard, exposing their inherent beauty as well as their ominously defunct and desolate status. In ‘Cap Gris Nez’, the bunker is rising out of the ground like the grizzly wreck of a ship, its looming façade echoed by the artificial cliffs on the beach. By contrast in ‘Pointe Du Hoc’, the blockhouse is showered by shooting stars instead of bombs, giving these desolate fireworks a sense of timeless beauty and serenity. Although the structures are metaphors of failure, their failure in itself gives rise to a sense of hope. The final battle in this war is being won by nature, and by contrast man’s endeavours seem rather petty and absurd.”
Francesca Fuchs