Between 2017 and 2024, the Leipzig-based photographer Christian Rothe (*1986) roamed with his analogue large-format camera the vast area of the former Buchenwald concentration camp on the Ettersberg near Weimar. Ruins, barely recognisable foundations, stairs, fences and paths emerge like topographic scars and signs in the impenetrable thicket. What began tentatively became an intensive search for traces and a stocktaking of contemporary history overlaid by nature. The black-and-white photographs enter into dialogue with the poem The Fettered Forest by José Fosty and literary passages by Bruno Apitz, Imre Kertész and Jorge Semprún.