Frank Rothe

During the funeral of my very best friend Dirk Sommer, I walked through his city of Leipzig, Germany for a while - just to have a break from all the ceremony. The city I knew so well because of him, was not the same on that day. I looked at the houses, the people and everything seemed different to me. I felt scared. It was the city I had known for 14 years; as long as I had known my friend. Two weeks later I came back with my camera and started to photograph Leipzig. I wanted to be in Leipzig and find a way to get to know my dead friend’s home a second time without him.

For me it was a very difficult project because I knew that I had to produce something extraordinary, something what could have surprised my friend, who worked as a documentary film-maker and died in a car accident in the Ukrain. So I started to shoot like a documentary film-maker would shoot. While walking in the city I looked for special moments, because I wanted to capture pictures that were showed a little story. I wanted each of the pictures to say something, like a film would. So that the viewer could look at them and think about a story, with his own interpretation. The project went on for 6 months. I shot over 3,000 images and then I edited them down to about 30 images. On the eveing of the exhibition in Leipzig, Dirk came back for a couple of hours with all of his family and friends within in the images.