Afghanistan

The Bundeswehr's involvement in Afghanistan will end in 2014. For over ten years, German soldiers risked their lives as part of their ISAF mission. In February 2010, Jens Umbach started his photo project in which he portrayed Bundeswehr soldiers who were sent to Afghanistan and their families. Photographs were taken of soldiers before their deployment, at the Mazar-i Sharif base and after their return to Germany.

Jens Umbach's large-format black and white photographs show a cross-section of the emergency services. But the wives and children of the soldiers were also photographed while they were waiting for their partners, fathers and mothers stationed in Afghanistan, as well as the disabled and the bereaved who irretrievably lost what was dear to them as a result of the war. With his work, Jens Umbach documents a previously unrecognized part of Germany's commitment in Afghanistan. Here he does not use the stylistic devices of journalistic reportage photography. Rather, he portrays the people against a neutral, white background. This reduced and timeless style of photography allows him to focus directly on the people involved. In doing so, he ultimately tells a different, more sensitive story of the conflict - a story that deals exclusively with those affected, their experiences and the personal changes and feelings that have etched themselves on their faces.

With life-size black and white prints and individual colored landscape photos, an exclusive photo book will also be published as part of the exhibition, which will serve as a contemporary document of the Bundeswehr's military commitment in Afghanistan beyond the exhibition period.