Soldaten_0008-0129

Kehrer

80 pages, Hardcover

23 x 28 cm
36 colour illustrations
English

Limited edition of 700 copies, 2023

In Soldaten_0008-0129, Irina Ruppert combines passport and portrait photographs of international soldiers with dead insects. The portraits are relics from the past and reveal nothing about the individual stories of the soldiers. Their uniforms testify to their origins and military rank – yet we do not know what the young men experienced. Symbolically embodied by the dead insects, the images are surrounded by a sense of death. The flies and spiders evoke decay and oblivion, killing and being killed.

Irina Ruppert’s work was initiated through her exploration of her Ukrainian-born grandfather, who was drafted into the Wehrmacht during the Second World War. The questions she would have asked her long-deceased grandfather became the basis for Soldaten_0008-0129. (Sophia Greiff)