Abstract
The photographer Eva Leitolf’s complex of works developed between 1992 and 2008 entitled »Deutsche Bilder – eine Spurensuche« focuses upon and engages with the phenomenon of xenophobic, racially motivated violence in Germany. Her photographs dating from the beginning to mid-1990s present the crime scenes where the attacks were perpetrated, locals who sympathised with the acts as well as passive bystanders. In 2006 Eva Leitolf resumed this work but reduced the content of the pictures to the locations of the incidents, connecting each one with a meticulously researched piece of text on the progression of events as well as its legal, media and political treatment. Her long-term concept for her work is two-fold, investigating the way in which society deals with xenophobic, racially motivated violence and at the same time exploring both the potential and the limitations of what can be depicted.