On January 28th 1993 the workers of the briquette factory 64 in Lauchhammer were laid off. I took their picture immediately after they received the notice of dismissal. The people there knew me.    I had been taking pictures for two years in these factories. I still remember the situation clearly. The manager was sitting on a table in a very small office. He handed the letter of dismissal, which he took from a cardboard box, to every person entering. They were signed and taken along when leaving the office. Before they left the place I took the picture of those, who agreed to it.

I alternated between using a Leica range-finder camera and a Nikon small picture-reflecting camera. Twenty-eight photographies from this series were exhibited on a wall in the Industrial Museum of Saxony as part of my exhibition “Die letzte Schicht” (engl. ‘The last shift’).