(2023-)
I have considered the idea of photographing the remaining bunker structures from the second world war many times during the years, but every time I have rejected the idea, thinking that they have been the objects of photography too many times already, both by serious photographers, and others. I couldn’t see how my images could be any different than those already made too many times. And maybe they can’t. But nevertheless: It seems like this topic has chosen me; the bunkers are all over the place, where ever I go, and whenever I see them I don’t seem to be able to resist to point my camera at them.
I have always considered the bunkers an accepted part of the coastal landscape. When I was a child, the kids in my street played in the bunkers on the hillside right behind our street, and there are multiple sites of such bunkers close to where I lived then, and, also to where I live now. Furthermore, the bunkers fit just too perfectly into my interest for artificial landscape structures and how they merge with the ever-existing natural landscape around us. In Norway, the bunkers were often made to be unnoticed in the first place, as they were fitted into the coastal rock landscape. Even if their shapes are often alienating in themselves when studying them too closely, they are still largely accepted as a part of the contemporary landscape. Hence, I decided to try to explore and focus on exactly this aspect of the bunkers: How they have become a natural part of the original landscape, or not. Following that thought and seeing how they are sometimes overgrown by nature and, not just accepted, but also used by people to their advantage, my focus also includes the questions of how they are sometimes being reclaimed by nature, or not; and how they are part of contemporary life, and not only the landscape, or not.
The Atlantic Wall is the name given to the extended system of defensive structures and fortifications along the coast of Norway and most of West Europe at the time they were build. My project focuses on the remains of defensive structures in the southern part of Norway, and on the west coast of Denmark.
© Anette Nordskog