This image taken in Neuengamme is part of the series totenstill (Deadly Silence), a collection of black-and-white photographs of former Nazi concentration camps in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France, the Czech Republic, and Poland. Searching for answers in the architectonic forms of the camp, the physical remains of a most brutal system, Reinartz captures in the photograph the oppression he felt when seeing this branch canal. The unnatural straightness of the canal brought to the artist’s mind also the railway tracks in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and bears witness to the unspeakable cruelty suffered by the laborers imprisoned in Neuengamme.
Dirk Reinartz (1947, Aachen, Germany – 2004, Berlin, Germany)
Dirk Reinartz was a student of Otto Steiner at the Folkwang School in Essen. Starting in 1971 as a photographer for the weekly magazine Stern, he then moved on in 1977 to work as a freelance photographer. Reinartz was a founding member of the renowned agency VISUM. He portrayed people and their urban environments, took artist portraits and documented those places which held particular meaning for him. Numerous trips throughout Germany and abroad provided the subject material for his works which were then often brought out in book form. Earning exceptional attention was his 1994 photo series totenstill, which has been shown in 25 locations worldwide.
