RAF - No evidence

More about the book

"Numerous accounts of the RAF and the 'German fall' of 1977 have been given over the past forty years, from journalistic, historical, literary, cinematic, and artistic perspectives. Arwed Messmer works with the various photographs made by police photographers at the time - pictures of demonstrators, crime scene images, and mug shots. He asks how this historical search for criminological evidence can be employed artistically today. His narrative strikes an arc from the beginnings of the RAF to the multiple eruptions of violence in 1977, the abduction and murder of Hanns Martin Schleyer, and the deaths of Andreas Baader, Gudrun Ensslin, and Jan-Carl Raspe in Stammheim prison. Messmer's work also has an ethical dimension, asking which photographs can be shown, how can they be shown, and why we want to see them? This investigation touches on a key issue in the debate on images that are both historical documents and pictures with their own aesthetic quality and a powerful and independent potential for an empathetic examination of history"--Back cover of supplement.