Objekt I

Ruth Stoltenberg’s work shows us the former Berlin-Hohenschönhausen detention center and the accompanying prison hospital from a very personal perspective: the sensitive photographs are accompanied by accounts by eyewitnesses of their horrific experiences at the hands of the East German Stasi in these very rooms. Especially thought-provoking are the interior views of the interrogation rooms, which were meant to project a cozy living-room atmosphere in contrast to the sparsely furnished cells in order to move prisoners to divulge information. The chairs on which those questioned were seated loom large in these images, standing for the many individual fates that were once sealed on the premises. The central questions that shaped Stoltenberg’s photo series were: How powerful is our instinctive urge for freedom? How can an individual bear being at the absolute mercy of others, subjected to torture and strategies for breaking down his will? How is it possible to live through so many days, weeks and months of uncertainty and fear? What is the prisoner’s perception of time passing? What does he reveal to his interrogator in the long hours of questioning? Bereft of any sensationalism, Stoltenberg’s photographs have a profound simplicity that is shocking in its own way.