Blockhaus, Brittany (France), 2015

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At the beginning of 1941, Hitler ordered the construction of a monumental submarine base in Lorient, on the Southern coastline of Brittany (France). To protect this fortress, bunkers were built along the coast and were integrated later to the Atlantic Wall in 1942, in order to stop any landing. Those fortified defences can still be seen today and they have become part of the everyday landscape. I grew up on this coast and saw these bunkers every day. They always intrigued me as they are charged with history and human stories. Over the years, some of these bunkers have been recycled into private houses, used by various associations, but there are still a lot of them abandoned where the landscape is reclaiming its territory. More recently, local artists have painted some of them.