It must have been 2005 or 6. A colleague knew that I was, as she called it, ‘doing things with old images’. She had herself been given a collection of slides that her sister, who had a business in second hand furniture, found. I was told that the images were mostly boring landscapes. When I looked through the material I soon noticed that she never saw it all. It took me a couple of years to figure out what to actually do with the beautiful series of portraits that was mixed in with the landscapes. My edit had to be about them, as a couple, and about the mountains that are the backdrop of their repeated act of happiness.
After the book ‘Komm, mein Mädchen, in die Berge’ was published I a journalist from a German news paper contacted me. She wanted to find out everything about the couple. I felt I had an obligation towards these people whose photographs I appropriated. So we did it together. It took us some time to find someone who was able to fulfill her wish. She published the article the day before we met the informant. She had come to the conclusion I reached after going through the slides for the first time. This story is too beautiful for a sad ending. We were right. You don’t want to know. Just travel along with P. and G. through time and their mountains.
The book sold out, only some copies of the special edition are still available, in a box with one of the original slides, so each edition is a one off:
The publication on the book in the Frankfurter Algemeine Zeitung can be found here: