On day, my German grand mother Ursula “Oma Uschi”, told me that I could find clues about my mysterious grand father Gerhard in a biography of famous painter Gerhard Richter. Intrigued, I searched. What I found were signs, traces. Emotions. Nothing more. No tangible revelation.

These series of images are from my research process, and include the series “Papiere bitte”, as well as pictures of imaginary walls created with miniature bricks.

Berlin is where I was born. It’s also an ou-topos, a no place, existing only in my mind. A place that I have imagined, just as I imagined the part of Germany that was then called the GDR, the German Democratic Republic (Oct. 7 1949 - Oct. 3 1990, and where most of my family had stayed after World War II.

I created these images in Bagnolet, France, in 2015 - 2016.