In July of 1958 young French philosopher Paul Virilio (1932-2018) literally stumbled across the remains of the Atlantic Wall, the coastal fortifications built by Nazi Germany along the coasts of e.g. France and Denmark: useless, forgotten and partly covered in layers of sand they fascinated him due to their archaic presence. This chance encounter was the starting point of a decade-long project to document, photograph and research these leftovers of the Second World War. In 1975 Virilio presented the results of his endeavor at Musée des arts décoratifs in Paris in the form of an exhibition and a book titled „Bunker archéology“.
In the decades following, the publication was reprinted in different translations and formats, often lacking the initial visual documentation of the bunkers and thus taking away much of Virilio’s research. Against this background the book’s recent reprint by Spector Books is all the more appreciated: newly translated by Simon Cowper „Bunker Archeology“ beautifully reproduces Virilio’s original photographs and thus reinstates the explanatory power of the original publication.
But the book’s power (and harrowing insights) not only lies in the photographs of the bunkers but even more in Virilio’s writing and research: with archeological rigor he recorded, systematized, typed and also drew the bunkers during the countless trips he undertook together with his wife and his daughter Sophie (who co-edited the reprint and also penned a foreword). Beyond this archeological effort Virilio reverts to the horrors that are associated with and inscribed into the bunkers: they were designed to protect German soldiers and give them a free field of fire, buildings of life and death so to say. Virilio also devotes an entire chapter to Albert Speer and his precisely planned machinery of war, his complicit collaborators and the Organisation Todt that was responsible for the Atlantic Wall.
„Bunker Archeology“ is a monumental book that with great clarity shows the interlocking of architecture and war, the landscapes it shaped and what remains of it. Still a fascinating yet disturbing and such highly recommended read!
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