The works are exhibited at the Moni Lazariston
One Step Beyond – The Mine revisited (OSB) is an artistic project that tells of landmines and landmine survivors and their visible and obvious relationship to one another. People who have been injured by landmines recalled their experiences for OSB and described the course of events surrounding their accidents. Some of them have made drawings of the places where their accidents occurred. Following our conversations, I took portrait photographs of them with a large-format camera, and in exchange for their accounts they were given a Polaroid version of the portrait.
With the aid of their stories as well as after consulting military and minefield maps and information made available by deminers, I began researching those mines which could have been responsible for these accidents. I then photographed and documented these mines in great detail. The interviews and my research took me to probably the most extensively mined countries in the world: Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cambodia. Of the forty-eight survivors I spoke with, thirty-seven were civilians at the time of their accident. In the publication of OSB seventeen of them are represented by a portrait, a personal account, and, if available, a personal drawing.[…]
To this core concept, other themes relevant to OSB are photographed and presented, such as mine clearance, mine education, and rehabilitation projects.
OSB began in August 2001 and is still not finished. In the years 2007 and 2008 I want to present this project in Afghanistan, Angola, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Cambodia, where the interviews took place.
Extract from Lukas Einsele, One Step Beyond, Hatje Cantz, Germany, 2005
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