Patrick BRUNET

The secret laboratory

In the summer of 2013, Timothy Koeth a researcher at the University of Maryland was sent a mysterious uranium cube with the following note : « Taken from the German nuclear reactor that Hitler tried to build. A gift from Ninninger ». Timothy Koeth didn’t know who Ninninger was, but decided to investigate. After putting back together the pieces of the story, he came to this terrifying conclusion : the cube is supposedly from the Third Reich secret laboratory built during World War II under Haigerloch Castle in Germany.

This laboratory really existed and was dismantled in 1945. Today it houses the Atomkeller Museum which is dedicated to the German Atomic Research. It’s a creepy story. It reminds me of the dark hours my parents suffered during the Occupation. A painful episode in their lives they never stopped talking about. The images from this laboratory I am presenting are deeply imbued with our family history. Without being aware of it, Photography often reveals a dark part of ourselves, exorcising our fears and anxieties.

Patrick BRUNET

Patrick Brunet was born in 1958 in Valence in the French department of Drôme where he discovered photography at the age of 15. Since 1988, he has been a mechanical engineering teacher in a technical college.

He graduated from the University of Grenoble (Master of Science and Techniques of Materials and Master of Technology) and holds the Aggregation of Industrial Engineering Sciences
(Mechanical Engineering option).
He first exhibited at the “Contrejour Gallery” in Paris in 1992 (1st Prize from the Angénieux Foundation), then at the “Salon International de la Recherche Photographique de Royan” in 1994 (2nd Prize).

He put aside photography for 20 years to devote himself to his teaching career. In 2019 and 2020 he was preselected for the “Boutographies de Montpellier”. In 2019, he exhibited «hors les murs» at Boutographies, a series that tells a largely unknown part of the Third Reich history.