By Fredrik Marsh's accounting, there's a lot of ruin in Dresden. Or should I say "ruins," as in time's effect on architecture, culture's physical artifacts, over centuries? Is Dresden a ruined city, or a city of ruins? Neither, probably, but both in this version of its story. The place that was Dresden, thriving and productive, is a distant memory here. An atmosphere of aggression, neglect, disaster, and abandonment pervades these photographs. I hesitate to read the essays, in part because I want photographs to tell me their own stories, but also because I'm sure the three writers, plus Marsh in an afterword, would collectively tell a traumatic tale about the city's fall from grace, about how it was bombed into rubble during World War II to persuade the Axis powers that their cause was doomed. The writers would tell me, too, that there are numerous forces working on and against Dresden's renaissance. The Fall of the Berlin Wall, the subsequent dismantling of Communist East Germany, and a devastating Elbe River flood in 2002, have had various effects on this erstwhile Baroque gem of a city. Setbacks and advances, progress and decline-these circular, oxymoronic, yin-yang exchanges seem to be the "transitions" of the title.




The photographs are somewhat veiled; those seeking evidence of Dresden's status as a city, or as a place to live, might conclude that industry, utilities, housing, and commerce are all irreparably ruined. Marsh photographed small gardens along the river that were destroyed by the 2002 flood, shortly after the incident occurred; not unlike photographs of post-Katrina New Orleans, these panoramic black-and-whites describe a depopulated (post-neutron bomb?) landscape in surreal, chaotic jumbles. The scale and perspective of these approach the human, the close-at-hand, as do many if not all of the interiors of abandoned apartments. However, there's no unifying cause to it all. Comprehension cannot be easily tied to the ramifications of a single event or period in time. The interiors, full of puzzling facts, the décor of decay with its often surprisingly vivid colors (color reproductions blend almost seamlessly with duotones in this collection, which is a notable feat), are not those of flooded houses, yet they convey some of the same sense of lives interrupted midstream, or renovation construction left incomplete. But what apocalyptic horseman drove these people away? What holocaust was carried out in the residences of Dresden?



If one is inclined to think of transition as a linear, "before/after" phenomenon, this book will reset expectations. All of the images reveal places that are neither pre- nor post- anything, but simply mid-, with no prognosis likely outside of stasis. One comes a little unglued, or unhinged, contemplating Marsh's ostensibly objective work here; though the views are steady, intriguing, and confident, the visual markers are all askew. —George Slade