Images on eastern Germany: football, borders and memories (12 photos)
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cafebabel.com
Shots from a Paris-based Italian photographer who documents memory and eastern German heroes, from FC Magdeburg to border(line) villages and decaying city sites. Her solo exhibition in Paris opens on 18 March 2010
Italian photographer Chiara Dazi's oldest project dates from between 2006-2009, when she captured decrepit sites like the Plenterwald amusement parc and the palace of the republic. Her focus is on their correlation with public memory
Her next project shifts focus to a memory from GDR (German democratic republic) times: their once-most famous football club from the east, FC Magdeburg
The team's greatest success remains crystallised in 1974 at the European cup winner's cup (UEFA champion's league) final against defending champions AC Milan
'Football is a prodigy of our times,' explains Dazi
Her photos look at what tradition in Magdeburg means for its identity as an eastern German city today
Memory crops up in Dazi's third project (2009). She marks twenty years of the fall of the Berlin wall with a trip down the east German border. Pictured: Sieben Lindon
Her trip uncovers an ecovillage, built in 1997 and housing 120
Former textile hub Ebersbach, on the Czech border, lies almost empty today
You do however see many second generation Vietnamese people; between 1980-1989, around 70, 000 workers came to East Germany to work in the textile industry
The Unesco world heritage site is the Mallorca of the border: the press has popularly branded it 'Germany's pensioner paradise'
Görlitz is in the far east of the country
Catch Chiara Dazi's exhibition, with the Paris-based Agraph photographer collective, at 138 rue Lecourbe, metro Vaugirard, Paris, until 18 June 2010 (From Tuesday to Saturday, 10.30-19.30)