Where giants sleep

Where giants sleep

Anne Oehlen

The outside

A military base is a forbidden area for everyone not working in the military. Its presence can be obvious though to the outside world. When I was a child, each day F15 fighter jets came over with deafening noise. Tea trembled in the teacups and conversations stopped for a while.

We knew a US-army squadron was stationed nearby and obviously a number of F15 fighter jets, but that was about all we knew.

After the Cold Warwas over part of the base lost its military purpose. The US army part of the base was decommissioned in 2008 and handed over to the local authorities. However strange it might sound, military terrains often seem to harbour many rare and even endangered plants and animals as there is little human interference apart from military drills. So, the local authorities decided it would be best to leave the area as it was (mostly) and turn it into a nature reserve. Some of the military infrastructure and buildings were removed, but many of them are still there, which adds a strange atmosphere to the place. So, when the place opened to the

public I finally could go there and see for myself what it looked like. The huge shelters that once housed the F15’s now look like giant sleeping bodies dotted over the place. It has a “Sleeping Beauty” feel to it with the difference that I hope these giants will never have to be kissed to life again. Many structures and buildings that are still there were built during the Cold War and meant to withstand heavy bombing and even a nuclear attack.

There is a sense of mystery to those sleeping military structures surrounded by nature that found its way into the series of photographs too.

I took no overview images, but mostly fragments and close-ups, like photographing only parts of a body to leave it to the viewer to imagine the whole picture. No humans appeared in the images, but of course the signs and traces of their presence are everywhere. Some are still fresh, others old and broken. Those traces add to the mystery and are food for imagination. It's hard to pinpoint exactly what fascinates me so much about this place, for mostly the first response is on a subconscious level. Looking back at the photographs I took over the last year, a pattern surfaces. Many images are about the interaction between nature and humans or what they left behind. If the remnants of a fence or part of a man-made structure are still visible in an otherwise pristine looking patch of nature, I’m tempted to include those elements. Perhaps that is what makes this former military base so intriguing. The interaction between nature and man-made is inescapable.

It would have been logical perhaps to focus also on the rare plants and animals that can be found there, but that would be a new project altogether.

The inside

Right from the start I was curious about the inside of those mysterious buildings. On National Monument Day some of them happened to open to the public. As strangely dreamy as the outside appeared to me, so bleak and spartan was the interior of these buildings. Inside the Cold War could still be felt and I tried to imagine what it would have been to be in there for

several days or even weeks, counting the days and only hoping to find a still habitable world outside. In reality these shelters and bunkers never were put to the test in real war conditions and were mostly used for training purposes.

All photographs are copyright of Anne Oehlen.