These portraits show ten German physicist who were arrested within the secret service operation Alsos Epsilon Toothpaste aka “Alsos III” in 1945. They were Erich Bagge, Kurt Diebner, Walther Gerlach, Otto Hahn, Paul Harteck, Werner Heisenberg, Karl Wirtz, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Max von Laue und Horst Korsching. They have been interned nearby Cambridge. They were interrogated and bugged. But there was no way to find out wether Nazi-Germany had a working atomic bomb.

The portraits of these men are in the form of squares standing on end, diamonds on the playing card. Structures develop on them: the first are dotted lines. This has been revised, the lines were closed. The faces emerge clearly, expressionistically. The shapes that enclosed the lines begin to outshine. The experiment takes on a life of its own. In the fourth stage, the shapes condense into circles, ovals and dots. Then it is over.

2012-2014