Mule on Blåvand beach

Anyone who has ever been to Blåvand Beach on holiday in Denmark will be familiar with the mules on Blåvand Beach. When you see them for the first time, you might quickly think of horses, but far from it. As on the entire west coast of Denmark, there are numerous well-preserved bunkers of the Atlantic Wall from the Second World War in the region around Blåvand. Bill Woodrow’s mule sculptures were created in 1995 to mark the 50th anniversary of Denmark’s liberation. He had the idea of remodelling the bunkers because mules are a cross between a horse mare and a donkey stallion. The special thing about these animals is that they cannot reproduce themselves. So the mule bunkers and the suffering that the occupation brought with it should no longer reproduce. The steel plates that give the bunkers the shape of mules are attached in such a way that the animals appear to go into the water. One day, the bunkers all along the west coast will disappear into the sea, as the sea, wind and waves will continue to move the land boundary. Unfortunately, this is now the case, as we see fewer and fewer of them every year. They sink further and further into the sand. It used to be possible to walk through the bunkers, but these entrances have all disappeared into the sand. That’s why I decided to capture the motif as a postcard. Although you can still buy the motif in Denmark from time to time, postcards will soon be hard to find there too. The Danish postage is currently 36 DKK, which is the equivalent of 5 euros. That’s too expensive even for the Danes and they shake their heads at it. What a pity.
Karina Elsen