18 December 1989

The newspaper text reads:
...all of us, guilty and innocent, young and old, must accept the past. It is not a question of overcoming the past, because that is not possible. It cannot be altered later or undone. But those who close their eyes become blind to the present. The 8th May, 1945, he told Germans, should not be seen as a defeat but as a day of liberation from Nazism, from 'an aberration in German history'.

In the foreground an ivory carving of the Madonna and child. Its reflected image merges with that of the woman as she stares into the museum case, the edge of which obscures her eye. Beyond is a red classical interior.

A panel painting in extreme close-up showing an eye with a deep laceration to the pupil.

In a vaulted interior the woman looks towards the man who is momentarily revealed by a gust of wind which blows aside a thin white curtain. He lies unconscious with both hands between his knees. To the left a camera burns whilst above are three composite heads; those of Kohl/Shevardnadze, Bush/Krenz and Havel/Ceausescu.

Once I was a fighter
But now I can't see my enemy
For the fog all around me.
Masaki Kobayashi 'The Empty Table'