“Edge of the Village/Grenzland” is a photobook by Dana Mueller Robinson, published by Hartmann Books (ISBN 978-3-96070-148-4). The clothbound hardcover with foil stamping measures 17 × 24 cm and runs approximately 264 pages, with about 128 illustrations. The book contains English and German texts. The publisher presents it as a photographic chronicle of a vanishing generation and their lived experience during one of the 20th century’s major geopolitical divisions.
Mueller Robinson was born in a small village in the GDR, in Thuringia, close to the border with West Germany and Bavaria. Beginning in 2010, she returned to her home village to photograph, conduct research, interview family members and gather historical documents. Her contemporary photographs show family members, local residents and especially the landscape where the former border once stood, reflecting on the realities and sentiments of post-unification Germany. The book also draws on her family’s personal archives, whose narratives address generational experiences of living and working in the German Democratic Republic. The publisher describes the project’s aim as recording these first-hand memories and relationships to place before they disappear.
Two authors contributed essays rather than photographs. Asif A. Siddiqi writes about a series of 1958 photographs showing villagers gathered around a handmade rocket built by Mueller Robinson’s grandfather in their backyard, staging an imaginative journey to the moon. Matthias Quent, a German sociologist, examines persistent political, social and demographic inequalities in eastern Germany and their consequences for political mentalities and regional identity formation. All statements above follow the publisher’s description and edition details.
