Freya Najada

Under towering chimneys in a sprawling industrial landscape, a group of lakes, pristine paths, and viewing benches are improbably sited. In among them, visiting tourists are reduced to mere specks, backs turned away from us, as they stare fixedly at the smoke shafts in the middle distance, billowing into the summer sky. This is Lusatia, soon to be Europe’s largest artificial Lake District. Sited at the Eastern edge of Germany, the region has held a reputation as one of the most polluted in the country. For more than a century, forests were felled, and villages emptied to make way for vast lignite mines, which gradually decimated the area. But beginning in the 1970s and with renewed vigour after reunification, old pits were flooded to create artificial lakes. Now, there are around ten in use, with more on the way, and a fledgling tourism trade has begun re-cultivating the land. Freya Najade became captivated by Lustatia’s quasi-industrial feel, and the measured, yet determined pace of change. Named Jazorina for the local Lower Sorbian word for »lake district,« her photographs are silent, studied things, beautifully colored, and flushed with light. Capturing the dense layers of the region’s history, they seem to speculate on what went before, and what might come after. (Lucy Davies)