Damian Heinisch’s 45 begins with a number and a coincidence of timing. In 1945 and again in 1978, members of his family boarded trains that carried them toward either death or freedom; on each of those journeys, the relative in question had just turned 45. Heinisch later retraced a comparable route himself, travelling from Ukraine to Oslo across present-day Europe, and the photographs he made along the way return repeatedly to that threshold age. Every image in the book is taken through a train window. The glass is not a neutral frame; it separates the photographer from the streets, platforms and rooms he passes, while also pressing his own reflection and the carriage’s interior onto the view outside.

The sequence works by accumulation rather than declaration. Fragmentary views of buildings, roads and figures emphasise human presence by withholding it, so that the reader gradually becomes aware of the window as both a physical boundary and a historical one. Heinisch’s source material is familial memory, but the book does not treat it as private anecdote. Set against the migrations of 1945 and 1978, the journey raises questions about forced movement within Europe’s borders, then and now.

That tension acquired a sharper edge after the fact. Heinisch returned from the journey in 2013; eight months later, conflict broke out in the Donetsk region, beginning a war that continues. The book’s publication in 2020 thus places its images in a context the photographer could not have anticipated when he made them.

45 won the 2020 MACK First Book Award, and its material form is integral to its argument. The paperback includes a flap and Japanese fold, printed with UV inks on uncoated stock, and a large-format fold-out poster. These choices give the fragmentary sequence room to unfold and refold. For a collector, the book matters less as a document of a single trip than as an early, carefully constructed statement by a photographer using the photobook to think about family, borders and time.