Deutsch
English
Background information
"In 'Tiefenenttrümmerung,' (Clearing the Dephts) Arwed MESSMER looks back: at the tremendous social, economic, and political upheavals in East Germany and Berlin after reunification in 1990. His panoramic images capture landscapes and cityscapes in transition; only a short time later, they will no longer be as they were before. In particular, he focuses on the destruction of East German post-war modernism. The disappearance of this architecture from the cityscape served one purpose: to make us forget the division of the country and the socialist state. Buildings were erected on the fallow land, and these were the buildings that had been destroyed in the Second World War. For example, the imposing Palace of the Republic had to make way for the reconstruction of the Berlin Palace. For a few weeks, graffiti on its last remaining retaining wall read: 'The GDR never existed.
Content
After numerous, highly acclaimed projects that drew on archives of various types of commercial photography (police, military and urban planning archives), Arwed MESSMER now turns his attention to his own archive. In the images of the photo volume 'Tiefenenttrümmerung' many problematic aspects of recent German history, such as the strengthening nationalism, find expression. He uses previously unpublished images, re-edits existing groups of works, reshapes them and relates the series to each other." (© Steidl Verlag, 2021)