The missing image

The ambiguous situation and way of life in occupied Austria after the end of World War II was the topic for this project.

After the end of World War II, the long-awaited peace seemed to have arrived, but confrontation, conflict, violence and tension continued in the occupation zones for another 10 years, from 1945-1955. In numerous testimonies of Austrian residents about the behavior of the Soviet troops stationed in Freistadt, on the border between Austria and the Czech Republic, in official documents of the Soviet military administration, in photographs of soldiers and in the memories of local residents, fear is always evident, traced on the axis "their own - strangers", "defeated - occupiers". The topography of the city becomes a kind of map of fear, on which the objects described in documents and memories are plotted, some of which have survived to this day. Because of the ban on cameras during the Soviet occupation, no photographs remain of the locals, only recorded testimonies; the absence of a single medium in this story frees up a large field for speculation and assumptions, which form the missing details for the whole picture - a picture of Freistadt during the occupation.