W.G Sebald
[Writer, b. 1944, Bavaria, Germany, d. 2001, East Anglia, England.]
One has the impression that something is stirring inside [photographs]—it is as if one can hear little cries of despair,
gémissements de désespoir... as if the photographs themselves had a memory and were remembering us and how we, the surviving, and those who preceded us, once were.
I believe that the black-and-white photograph, or rather the gray zones in the black-and-white photograph, stand for this territory that is located between life and death.
In my photographic work I was always especially entranced... by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again if you try to cling to them.
