During the Second World War Germany established its southern front or Südwall, running from the Spanish to the Italian borders and following the Marseille coastline, as a defensive line against an Allied invasion. The defenses served the Wehrmacht, who occupied the area from 1943, and to this day remnants of the military bunkers and forts can be seen in Marseille, on the white rocky coast of the Calanques and on surrounding islands, such as the Îles du Frioul. Unlike the Atlantic bunkers in Brittany and Normandy, the history of the Südwall is not well known.My series of photographs seeks to unearth these fortifications, which, because they are built of concrete, are virtually integrated into the rocky landscape of the coast. Were it not for the colourful graffiti and images that adorn them, they would vanish into the landscape, like camouflaged soldiers. I am not interested in a study of anthropomorphic forms, but in the form of the landscape itself as an environment for the bunkers, which through their stonelike character have become the landscape.The Südwall has changed over the decades from a fortress to ruins and architectural relics. Nature and man-made construction have become woven together into a unified matrix. Some bunkers were later transformed into homes in which people now live. In one of my images there is a stone memorial that reminds us of the victims of war – three resistance fighters who died young and are now present only by name: Jean Odelin, seventreen years old, Serge Loiseau, nineteen years old and Jaques Baby, twenty-three years old.The Südwall is a memorial to the conflicted history of Germany and France and the catastrophe of two world wars. This former line of defence – part of Hitler’s Fortress Europe – reminds us that the Europe of today, a peaceful union of different countries, can not be taken for granted. It is fragile.