Fotomuseum Winterthur | Friday, 08.11.2002 – Sunday, 05.01.2003

Joachim Brohm – Areal

Joachim Brohm (born in 1955) embarked on a photo-urbanistic project based on long-term observation. For eleven years, between 1992 and 2002, he took photographs on the same site, a 600 x 600-metre area on the outskirts of a German city, during which time the site changed from a 1950s industrial and trade zone into an up-market services and residential zone. With the calm composure of a botanist and the curious eye of a stroller, he dedicated himself to this area, to its backyards, its discarded objects and its heaps of materials; then, later, to the clean-swept ground, the geometrical patterns of the new roads and the new buildings just coming into being.

The large-scale long-term project documents the change from a gradually developed and partially converted working zone into an almost futuristic post-industrial services and living area; above and beyond this, however, the project speaks of lasting and sustainable movement, of transitoriness, of the flow of reality and the change in the relationship between perception and reality. The site is cartographically captured in around 300 small-format, subtly colored, almost meditatively repetitive photographs that record the changes. 

The exhibition was curated by Urs Stahel. A cooperation with the Westfälischen Kunstverein, Münster, and the Fotomuseum in the Munich Stadtmuseum.