Karine Bizard
"that time of year thou mayst in me behold"¹ (¹sonnet 73, william shakespeare)
In the 1980s, Dirk (Hans Joachim Klein) belonged to the Revolutionary Cells, an extreme left-wing urban guerrilla group in West Germany. He supported the Red Army Faction (RAF) and carryed out terrorist actions with Bande à Baader. In 1975 he participated with the terrorist Ilitch Ramirez Sanchez, aka Carlos the Jackal, in the taking of 66 hostages in Vienna during the OPEC ministers conference. In 1977, HJK left terrorism and sent to Der Spiegel his personal weapon, fingerprints, and a letter of repentance. He became incredibly critical of antisemitism in international terrorism. For the next 20years, he will live in hidding in France. He was arrested in 1998, extradited to Germany, trialed and sentenced to 9 years in prison. He moved back in Normandy in 2003 and was finally pardoned in 2009. He died on November 9, 2022 . I thought the fall of his life worth telling. It interrogates us about the passage of time and forgiveness. Through my pictures I seek to question our empathy towards a human being who has committed acts that most of us qualify as inhuman. Helped by his inexhaustible will to not disappear, we started a journey engaging with each other. This series is an invitation to contemplate, through Dirk a man at the twilight of his life.

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