Bogdan Bouşcä

An abundant luxury in a dark and gloomy period of time for the entire continent of Europe.

After Germany was defeated in 1945, Wünsdorf became a shut-down Soviet city in the heart of Germany. The locals were evacuated, the streets were restricted for local traffic and the town was named by Germans as ‘The Forbidden City’. It became the host to more than 50,000 Red Army soldiers, the largest military base in Europe and at the same time the largest military base outside the former USSR, after the defeat of the fascist regime. With the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the former USSR in 1989, the Soviet troops were forced to leave Germany, implicitly this military base.

It has remained untouched ever since. It has not been reconditioned or modified in any way. No window or door frame has been changed. Everything is frozen in time. A ghost town. An area populated only by memories, last century ghosts, preserved history left in this state for recollection - a history textbook without pages. A living history textbook narrated by the walls of the buildings, the statues, theatres and concerts, the huge swimming pools, the dining rooms, the big rooms, the breath-taking architecture of the stairs, and the splendid gardens looking like the one described in Dickens’ ‘Great Expectations’ novel. This is where Hitler stepped foot and so did Göring, Rommel, Himmler and many others such as Stalin's famous insane generals full of infatuation and false grandiosity. A place full of echoes of voices and sounds from the steps of boots polished to the point of paroxysm. Sarcastic laughter and sinister metallic noises from the entire arsenal of weapons, a mixture of whispered Russian and German voices still arguing and fighting behind these walls narrating and displaying their blind and mute supremacy.

Today, the entire structure rots from deliberate negligence, being occasionally visited by photographers and by those having a passion for abandoned ruins, in exchange of a small fee.

I am incredibly glad to have the opportunity to spend close to an entire day in this place (clearly an insufficient amount of time to be able to explore every corner and every building). What I have done here can easily be considered as being the most spectacular part of my life. I was lucky to be accompanied by an exceptional model who not only was she posing expressively and freely in front of the camera (as if it was something done by default) but she was also an excellent guide for this photographic and historical approach of the place.

With great difficulty I tried to make a selection of the almost 3000 frames I have made that day. I am aware combining artistic nudity and ruins or deserted places is not a new invention, but in this case, the history of this place is an advantage. I can smell the history in the frames, I can hear the voices from the past, frozen in time, exactly the way photography could be described, the stillness of a second.

Why nudity? To balance the sadness and soberness of this place with the delicate and eternal beauty of the female body. An additional touch of authenticity is also given by the fact that the model was a native German, preserving the imprint of this photographic project.

In regard to the technicalities of this editorial, I consider them as being not too significant. But still here they are. The cameras used are a Canon 7D and a Canon 5D Mark III, a Lensbaby Composer lens (which is my favorite), 11mm was quite often used, Adobe Photoshop CC 2014 for image processing, and an Alien Skin plug used in most frames.

Faithful to monochrome because I cannot put together the smallest blotches of colour. Not to mention a generic frame which, if touched by colour makes my eyes become bewildered and sends my soul to another dimension, restraining me from seeing the emotions in front of me.

If you have the opportunity to visit this place, I wholeheartedly recommend you to. It is not expensive at all. Stay for at least two days. Go early in the morning to take advantage of the daylight. There are no places where you can drink or eat, so this is something you should be wary of. Take plenty of memory cards with you and charge your batteries because I assure you the place will give you plenty of inspiration.