In May 2012, in the forest of Hambach, Germany, a group of activists set up camp to protest three things: the nearby lignite surface mine, expansionist policies, and the destruction of the forest. Marc Wendelski spent a year with them in the camp. His work is an ecological manifesto whose aesthetic distance gives it a formal and timeless dimension.
How did you get the idea for this report on fossil fuel mines in Germany and the activists who have lived there for over two years?
It was a combination of chance, a reevaluation of my own approach to photography, and a growing involvement in politics. It was also a way to look outward and examine The Other, take his portrait and make it part of a documentary approach. One day, I read about the camp in a newsletter in a squat in Liège. I went for the first time and was shocked by what I saw, by the beauty of these young activists, by the visual power of their buildings, by the scale of the devastation. I went back every week for a year.
