|
While driving to Berlin a few years ago, friends of Bettina Lockemann decided to stop and visit the historic center of Braunschweig, a city they had never been to before. In the end the proposition turned out to be much more difficult than expected. They found neither the Cathedral, nor the Castle Square. Large city boulevards led them so swiftly around the periphery of the city that they never got downtown, eventually they just gave up and continued on to Berlin.
The photographs in the exhibition FROM THE PERIPHERY show images that make the aforementioned situation imaginable. Streets that have evidently lost their function as a connection between places and now exist only for their own sake. Roads that no longer lead to a destination, but rather keep automobile traffic flowing in tangents and circles, restless, with the exception of the occasional traffic backup. The photographer feels her way into the city with these images. Usually the route into a city leads to some dominant architectural attraction such as a city hall, a church, a castle, or a palace. Historically, the center of Braunschweig has always been the Burgplatz (Castle Square) with its cathedral and lion statue. In recent years the reconstructed palace, with its large plaza, has become just as important, as evidenced by its increasing popularity as a postcard motif. Such important architectural gestures are always the elements that come to symbolize a city. Braunschweig is where the lion is, or the palace. But Lockemann's photographs intentionally avoid such symbols because for the most part everything that we would call 'city' plays out in other areas. In places which possess no symbolic character. Where people sleep, live, and look out their windows into what seems to be arbitrariness, or chance. These places are generally located outside of the city center, and have nothing postcard worthy about them. While business and 'official' life are located in the geographical center, living itself takes place on the edge of the area that gives the city its identity. Residents spend little time where the tourists gather. In fact, if one measured the importance of places within the city by the amount of time that people actually spend in each, the center of the city would not exclusively be found in the geographical middle of it. Housing has generally maintained its original function over the years, however the dominant architectural elements of the city are often overwritten with new meaning. It is no longer the duke that strides through Brunswick Palace's gates, but everyday shoppers in search of clothing, or perhaps an ice-cream. Whereas the important buildings are stylistically typical, the residential architecture seems to be defined by its atypicality. This is especially true of apartments built in Braunschweig during the Nazi era, and then immediately following the war. Where all that is special or individual happens behind the facade. The photos assert that although invisible in the uniformity that often underlines the purported neutrality of public street space, something of this interiority can be still be sensed. It is a rather vague assertion, nevertheless one that is clearly evident. Viewers of these photographs must look inward in order to grasp their subjective intimacy. This is rooted in the personal experience upon which each of these images rests. The photos clearly state that they are not about pure appearances, or the desire to please. They are not about the primary meaning of that which is represented. In them we see spaces devoid of humans, despite their being densely populated. The city's residents appear as automobile passengers for the most part, and even then they are hard to find; an arm out a window, distorted faces reflected in windshields. These people are lost to the city, their cars have replaced them. Correspondingly, the dominance of traffic space in the exhibited images marks a situation that we have become accustomed to seeing in large urban areas: spaces full of traffic, or empty; automobiles in motion, or at a standstill. Although the progression of images displays a variation of elements; street, car, house; the street is the main compositional motif. Bettina Lockemann does not describe the city as a cluster of connections, she fragments it. The vertical format of the images underscores this characteristic. In the middle of the series several horizontal images appear. These, the only photos made from a moving car, make the street seem even wider. They suggest city space as street space, where the buildings that line it are reduced to the role of a stage like frame. Other photos show more placid sides of the city as seen from settlements on its periphery. Every impression that we see presents its content without malice. They do not vilify, they outline their statement reasonably and quietly, an assessment with tact. Of course the theme of city that is conveyed in these photos, both generally, and in this case, Braunschweig particularly, is only a first level of meaning. The images naturally have documentary value, however this is not the essence of the photos, but rather an added value. They come from the city that the photographer happens to have appropriated for this work. Therefore, we can look for traces of a subjective experience, a specific interpretation of reality. In this sense the works continue a long tradition. The attempt to understand and represent a quotidian and personal environment began in the art history of the second half of the 18th century. Initially, images of daily life, technology, and industry became the subject of paintings. In the 19th century, photography eventually established its primacy in the production of such images, by virtue of its ability to produce exact representations. Over the centuries, the city theme has attained a special significance in art, one not limited to the representation of churches and palaces. The everyday attains its rightful place. The rule that representations of past reality cannot be thought of as excerpts, but rather as the whole of that reality, also applies to the photos in the exhibition FROM THE PERIPHERY. Essence lies beneath the visible exterior that photography can so effortlessly produce for us, it is an inner image that is put forth by the viewer. The photos themselves present no more than meets the eye at a given time. Their meaning does not come from some special light phenomenon that occurs only once a year. There are no special effects, no dark room or printing manipulations. They stand, in light of that which is visible, for what we cannot see, but rather feel; assumptions, imaginations, clouded thoughts. Bettina Lockemann's photographs are simple, but always in the sense of a complexity that can only be achieved through simplicity, not obvious, never graspable and very personal. Dr. Markus Mittmann, May 2013 | translation: Jon Shelton Braunschweig – The Time Lapse Evolution of a City Every city can be thought of as the result of a long individual process. Braunschweig is a creation of the middle ages, radiating from the area known today as the Burgplatz (Castle Square). Uniquely the city develops out of five independent districts, which explains why today one can find several combinations of market squares and market churches, some still with their old city halls. Braunschweig grows upon its medieval city boundaries. A great number of residential and commercial buildings are constructed, above all in the 18th and 19th century, eventually establishing an inner ring around the city. Around 1900, the city experiences inward and outward growth along an additional new outer ring road. Residential buildings, like those in the eastern ring area, tend to be four story apartment blocks with variously decorated facades. In the nineteen-twenties the city center remains largely unchanged, in the outer city modern housing developments such as the Siegfried Quarter are built until the depression hits. In 1933 the picture changes. Braunschweig becomes a large and important city at the heart of Germany's enormous weapons industry. Building is now an instrument of political will. Besides military and party buildings, residential construction is also expanded, albeit in a once again more conservative, and simple form. Beginning in 1933, the population of Braunschweig grows throughout the war by some 25% (156,000–200,000). Allied bombing during the war produces horrific scars. The image of the city is disfigured beyond recognition. Ninety percent of the city is destroyed, though many of the residential buildings erected during the "Third Reich" survive the carpet bombing. Today, some 50,000 residents still live in apartments from this era. Of the surviving timber frame houses in the city center, more than half are razed to provide space for an automobile friendly reconstruction. The historic image of the city is only to be preserved within certain "Islands of Tradition," (e.g. Magniviertel). When the ruins of the old residential palace are torn down in 1960 rather than rebuilt, older residents can no longer recognize anything familiar in the new city center. The Bohlweg becomes the local "Kudamm" (short for Kurfürstendamm, Berlin's luxury shopping street) and now looks like a modern stage design for a smart period film set in the 1950s. The only thing that remains is the foundation that existed before the war: two ring roads around a center, and radially oriented traffic axis with accompanying residential settlements. Despite Braunschweig's architectural expansion in the 1970s through high-rise building projects on the city periphery (e.g. Weststadt), the city still seeks its identity between the palace and the castle square. Dr. Markus Mittmann, May 2013 | translation: Jon Shelton |
