In Transition by Yvonne Most

Issue 111

“In transition – People and places in change.”
The 3rd Generation Eviction of ancestry research in the Sudeten German region

“Who does not know his roots, does not know how to pause” (Stefan Zweig)

As granddaughter of an evicted family from the Sudeten German region, the 3rd Generation Eviction is of special interest for me to finally research it and translating it into photos. After World War II over three million Sudeten Germans were forced evicted from their homelands in Bohemia, Moravia and Sudeten-Silesia and were scattered around the whole world.

Lots of them, also my grandma, migrated to the middle of Germany. I hardly know anything about the escape. There are gaps in the family tree, people that are missing, that have disappeared. In some conversations with people of same age it becomes clear that there are descendants who at some stage will ask these questions and will start the journey to arrive within themselves in the end.

My goal is the connection of collective experiences from the forced eviction, from tracks of memories, from historical research and my new view on the area, a landscape, which has adhered scars. I am interested in the unfinished, the misplacing, what happens or does not happen on the edges, on the borders. The depth of stillness, the unspoken. This photo series shall enable myself and the observer to gain access to our own biography, shall create identities, shall strengthen roots.

“The camera is my tool. With its help I make everything around me meaningful.” (André Kertész)

The topics in photos: Identity, contextualisation, home from the beginning, unconsciously.
The connection to society with the topics: Escape, migration, identity, emigration of nations are more present and polarising than ever.

Yvonne Most lives and works in Germany.
To view more of Yvonne's work, please visit her website.