Timecapsules – Fotoserie evangelische und katholische Kirchen der Nachkriegszeit (1995–1999)

Timecapsules, 1995 - 1999 (some 2011)

Timecapsules was created between 1996 and 1999, during my studies under Bernd Becher at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf. The series documents Protestant and Catholic churches from the post-war period – buildings constructed in Germany between 1920 and 1990 that often stand in the shadow of better-known, older sacred architecture.

At the center of the series is the interior space: the light, the materiality, and the sober formal language typical of these churches' era. Many of the buildings photographed are located in Düsseldorf and the Rhineland, with others in Berlin and Cologne – places that embody the post-war society's reconstruction and its search for religious identity.

The title "Timecapsules" points to this dual character of the spaces: as sites of religious practice, but also as architectural witnesses to a specific period in German architectural history. The series' strict, matter-of-fact visual language stands in the tradition of the Düsseldorf School of Photography.