With the United Kingdom’s Brexit, Northern Ireland will also have to leave the EU – although most people here want to stay in the European Union. There is great concern that a hard border could revive the Northern Ireland conflict. Especially as the border region already offers few prospects. Toby Binder’s photo series “Wee Muckers” accompanies teenagers from six different Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods of Belfast and offers a glimpse into the everyday life of a whole generation.
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»If I had been born at the top of my street, behind the corrugated-iron border, I would have been British. Incredible to think. My whole idea of myself, the attachments made to a culture, heritage, religion, nationalism and politics are all an accident of birth. I was one street away from being born my ‘enemy’«. Paul McVeigh, Belfast-born writer and author of the novel ‘The Good Son’.
Old conflicts may recur, compromising the youth’s future prospects
Photographer Toby Binder has been documenting the daily life of teenagers in British working-class communities for more than a decade. After the Brexit referendum he focussed his work on Belfast in Northern Ireland. There is a serious concern that Brexit will threaten the Peace Agreement of 1998 that ended the armed conflict between Protestant Unionists and Catholic Nationalists who live in homogeneous neighborhoods that are divided by walls till today. Old conflicts may recur, compromising the youth’s future prospects.
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Nevertheless, being underage, most teenagers were not allowed to vote in the referendum. Problems they struggle with are similar – no matter which side they live on. And whatever the effects of Brexit will be, it‘s very likely that they will strike especially young people from both communities.
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Whatever comes of Brexit, the ramifications will be felt by communities on both sides
The images of the project “Youth of Belfast” were photographed in six different neighborhoods of Belfast. Binder’s photo essay depicts the ubiquity of unemployment, drug crime, and violence afflicting Belfast’s youth, whether they live on one side of the “Peace Wall” or the other. Whatever comes of Brexit, the ramifications will be felt by communities on both sides. The project accompanies teenagers in six different Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods, providing an intimate and immediate insight into the daily lives of a whole generation.
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“Wee Muckers – Youth of Belfast” is a long term photography work by Toby Binder. The hard cover book is published by German Kehrer Verlag.
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The topos issue 104 deals with the topic “border” from different perspectives and sheds light on the impact borders have on people, political processes, landscapes and urban space.
For a long time, world city with a heart – “Weltstadt mit Herz” – was the official marketing slogan of the city of Munich. Nowadays, like any city subject to a stay-at-home-order aimed at mitigating the impact of the Corona pandemic, it resembles more the character of the deserted cities. Munich is thus a “deserted city with a heart”.
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The eyes of the few observers who dare (or need to) venture into the city center see the buildings, streets and infrastructure as they have never seen them before. They seem depleted of their magic that used to attract as many people possible from as many places conceivable. #desertedcities is a popular hashtag on Instagram, as is #ghosttown.
Skeletal structure of urban culture
The eye gazes solitarily along the facades, almost as if one had been shifted into a painting by the Italian master of the scuola metafisica, Giorgio de Chirico. In his art, as in the present, the cityscape is laid bare, devoid of human life, exposing the skeletal structure of urban culture. Gaze wandering, we are startled. In the words of British rock supergroup Cream, “if I could catch your dancing eye, it was on the way, on the road to dreams, yea.” Perhaps it is an urban dreamscape we are witnessing – we might as well hope for a gentle awakening.
Half a year later …
That was half a year ago. In the meantime, societies across the world attempted a return to normal life. This didn’t succeed, and the euphemistic way of describing the outcomes is encapsulated in the term “new normal”, which simply indicates “change”. Our ways of life have changed, and some of us cope with it, while others deny it. Currently, Munich’s city center is under a mandatory mask order. A stroll downtown these days shows a rather heterogeneous picture. Some adhere to the order while others don’t.
Glimpses of Oktoberfest normality
Likely more relevant to the life, image and business this city thrives on is the cancellation of the Oktoberfest. The attempt is made to transform it into a more local and spatially limited form supported by local restaurants. Glimpses of Oktoberfest normality also meet the eye of the observer at the central Königsplatz, where a “Mini-Wiesn” complete with food stalls, kiddie rides and ferris wheel is taking place. This event is part of a city-wide initiative called “Sommer in der Stadt” (Summer in the City). In this sense the song has changed, and Mungo Jerry’s “In The Summertime” tickles ears across town – at least before the autumn leaves begin to fall.
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Read the article about the effects of the pandemic on the built environment.
Higher, better, faster – we live in a capitalist economy, one that fosters over-consumption; a modern economy that has to continuously step up production to survive. This vicious circle impacts the life of mankind and the whole biosphere. The changes that population growth and consumer capitalism cause on our planet are the theme of “Landscape of Consumption“, a film by the English photographer Karl Davies. The scenes in his production are mainly so depressing because he neither glosses over nor edits anything – he just reflects our everyday life.
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It is the middle of the night: garish lights flood the streets, groups of people cross over from side to side in movements like waves. The night-time scene of vivid advertising, music and city dwellers out shopping or eating on the go presumably stands for urbanity and quality of life. They turn night into day. While some work and produce products, others acquire products and consume. We ourselves are part of this; we let ourselves be carried along and away with it. But the feeling of excitement can soon subside, making way for a sense of disquiet and exhaustion – until, at last, we come to realise the consequences of such consumer behaviour.
Karl Davies, photographer and filmmaker from Bristol, captures precisely this sense of disquiet in his “Landscape of Consumption” production, a time-lapse short film consisting of more than 200,000 still images that he created on three continents. In this piece he evokes the changes that exponential population growth and consumer capitalism have on our planet. And not only mankind seems overtasked and overburdened by these never-ceasing phenomena, but most definitely the earth too.
Although the present capitalist-consumerist model has been accompanied by economic growth and improved living standards for most of the West – and still is – two aspects in particular are especially fatal: the unequal use of resources and the effects this has on the environment. If, for example, the whole world were to follow America’s example in terms of consumption, 5.4 planets would at present be required to supply the respective resources. Indeed, according to the Global Footprint Network, by July 2019 humanity had used as many resources as the earth needs a whole year to regenerate. We emit more carbon dioxide than forests and oceans are capable of absorbing, and fell more trees than can be replaced by new growth. As Greenpeace points out, 100 billion-plus garments – an unprecedented amount – were produced in 2014. By way of comparison, 10 kilograms of new clothing are bought by consumers in Germany every year, 16 kilograms in the USA and about two kilograms in Africa/ Middle East. The growing consumption of textiles in industrial states has grave environmental consequences in the countries where they are made, such as Bangladesh and China. As Karl Davies says: “For the first time in history, mankind’s primary issue is not scarcity, it is abundance.”
Watch here the time-lapse short film “The Landscape of Consumption” by Karl Davies.
The whole article about the film “The Landscape of consumption” can be found in topos 109.
Seonyudo Park is considered a pioneering post-industrial project in South Korea. Based on the multifaceted history of the Han Island, which located in the middle of the South Korean capital Seoul, planners developed a concept that incorporates and explains the complex industrial past. The park has been a success, albeit not entirely in the spirit of its inventors.
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Seonyudo Park is located on a small, oval-shaped island in the middle of the mighty Han River, which flows through the South Korean capital Seoul. The island has a long history of transformation and reinterpretation. At the time of the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910), a remarkable hill was located on Seonyudo. This impressive morphology, as well as the expansive view of the city from the hilltop, inspired Korean musicians, painters and writers. Appreciation for the landscape, however, changed at the turn of the 20th century: During the Japanese colonial period (1910-1945), large parts of the hill were excavated for the construction of infrastructure projects. The island, once a place of contemplation and an appreciation of the landscape, became a mining area for building materials.
In 1978, the island’s character changed once again. A wastewater treatment plant was built to ensure the supply of water to the south-western areas of Seoul. The facility took up the entire island and rendered it inaccessible to visitors. It was not until the wastewater treatment plant was shut down in 2000 that it was once again possible to make the island accessible to the general population and to reclaim Seonyudo as a recreational and green space.
Reinterpretation
Seo-Ahn Total Landscape and Joh Sung-yong Urban Architecture used the island’s multifaceted history to create an unconventional park on Seonyudo. Instead of strict conservation or a radical tabula rasa approach, the concept aimed to include and reinterpret the industrial vibe. The planners won several awards for their careful treatment of industrial relics, including the “Design Award of Merit 2004” from the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA). The 11.4 hectare park, which opened in 2002, strives to create a complex confrontation with the industrial past.
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Although nature created a global success story since the Emscher Park International Building Exhibition, in South Korea however, this approach to design was hardly represented at all at the beginning of the twentieth century. On the contrary, several Korean landscape architecture projects pursued the approach of restoring lost landscape values and locations from the Joseon Dynasty. Structural relics of the rapid industrialisation and urbanisation of the 1960s to 1980s seemed to be of little interest at the time and were therefore torn down or replaced by historical reconstructions.
When designing Seonyudo Park, the planners took the completely opposite approach. They saw the place as a landscape palimpsest, which can only be understood and enhanced by overlaying a variety of layers.
Making history visible
The wastewater treatment plant was dismantled with anatomical precision in order to gain insights into its interior and to transform based on an ecological ethos. Building roofs and false ceilings were removed. Former interior spaces became exterior space. Columns remained free-standing in the room like skeletal sculptures. Five park areas were created as part of this process: the Water Purification Garden, the Aquatic Botanical Garden, the Garden of Transition, the Four Circular Spaces and the Garden of Green Columns. An exhibition room, a café, a playground, a viewing pavilion and a greenhouse complete these central areas. Connection to the mainland will be provided via two bridges at the southern and northern ends of the island. For the Water Purification Garden and Aquatic Botanical Garden, the planners planted old sedimentation and filter basins from the treatment plant with bulrushes. Their aim was to bring the visitors closer to the water purification process by means of phytoremediation instead of the chemical processes that were used in the past.
The Garden of Transition was also created in the location of the former sedimentation basins. In the lowered, semi-open compartments, in which the old basic structure of the basins can still be seen, there is an aroma garden, a vineyard and a fern garden. The vegetation there is purely decorative. Although there are varied visual axes and spatial situations, this area lacks a recognizable reference to the location. Visitors can reach the four large buffer tanks via a raised bridge structure with platforms. Today, the huge cylindrical tanks house a playground, an education room, sanitary facilities and a concert stage. To the east of the tanks, almost in the centre of the park, is the Garden of Green Columns. The factory building was once located there and now only the remaining columns bear witness. Deprived of their supporting function, they merely provide support for plants and are increasingly disappearing under the abundance of growth.
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Filtered through the lens of the camera
Since the opening of the park sixteen years ago, nature has symbolically reconquered the sewage plant. The trees and shrubs at the edges of the island are so tall that they form a dense green wall. Original qualities of the island – the connection to the water, the wide view into the distance over the mighty floods of the Han River – have been lost. Trees, shrubs and perennials were planted very densely in order to quickly create an aesthetically pleasing impression. In an ironic twist, they now need to be removed for aesthetic reasons, reports the park manager.
As it has turned out over the years, appearance is of central importance. Numerous visitors come to the park because they are fascinated by industrial aesthetics, not because they want to confront its historical past. Industrial relics are known to have a high appeal, but in Seonyudo this aspect seems to be particularly pronounced. A study by Professors Shin Ha Joo and Young Hee Kim of Seoul Women University shows that most of the park is not visited by local residents. Instead, most of the visitors are young people who use the scenery for photo shoots, film shoots and selfies.
As a result, the gaze of many park visitors no longer seems to be directed at the landscape, but – filtered through the lens of the camera – at themselves. The reduction of the park to an aesthetic background may at first seem disillusioning to some planners. At second glance, however, Seonyudo’s media attention creates something essential: The concept of industrial nature is spreading and multiplying in South Korea on a large scale and at high speed through the numerous photos and film shoots.
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Read the opinion piece on Seonyudo Park and how photographic consumption influences the spatial understanding of parks in topos 107.
Less than meets the eye: this perfectly sums up the idea behind a Potemkin village. As the story goes, the Potemkin village is the invention of Russian Field Marshal Grigory Aleksandrovich Potemkin-Tavricheski, who became famous for his use of fake cities and mock towns for demonstrating the wealth and prosperity of the Tsarist Empire. To this day his idea is copied by many others, as shown in the book „The Potemkin Village“ by photographer Gregor Sailer. We spoke with him about the peculiar magic of modern-day Potemkin villages.
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Mr Sailer, where did you get the idea to search for today’s Potemkin villages?
I have been thinking about them for quite some time. My interest in the artificial and stage set-like character of architectural environments is something that motivated me within earlier projects, such as the so-called “Closed Cities” or a subterranean World War II-era factory for Messerschmitt airplanes. This time, the Potemkin village became the focus of my attention. My research yielded plenty of results. In today’s world, there is a surprisingly large number of architectural phenomena that can be related to the Potemkin village.
For instance?
For one, there are classical examples of mock villages that, just as in the days of Potemkin, feature staged architectural elements in order to simulate wealth and prosperity, even if the actual built environment communicates the opposite. This was the case in Russia. While in Russia, I took photos of buildings that were covered with huge printed canvases for a large media event. The aim was to give observers a better impression than was actually the case – which actually worked pretty well. Beyond that, there are other reasons for creating architectural backdrops. In recent years many armies erected ghost towns in order to train soldiers for missions in foreign countries. In Sweden, there are streets and rows of houses that serve as testing grounds for cars. In China, new urban quarters are built according to historic European models in order to sell them to affluent clients as high-end luxury residential real estate. It was important to me to deal with the phenomenon of Potemkin villages as broadly and as comprehensively as possible. This is why I included all these variations within my work, even though a term such as “mock village” carries negative connotations – after all, we are dealing with fake towns, meaning copies and counterfeits.
“In particular, the juxtaposition of illusion and failed attempt at illusion produces thrilling and strong images.”
What aspect of architecture that pretends to be something it is not is interesting to you as a photographer?
It isn’t the illusionary or deceptive character of such objects or places, but rather the interactions between successful and failed spatial illusions that I find fascinating. As a photographer, I have the opportunity to capture and focus on the backdrop character of building envelopes. Potemkin villages use them, after all, to create the illusion of a “normal” place. In particular, the juxtaposition of illusion and failed attempt at illusion produces thrilling and strong images. At the same time, my images are also supposed to convey a political message. I intend to make observers aware of the significant efforts that are made today and are aimed at the reproduction of particular aspects of reality. The creation of a controlled world of illusion requires huge investments. To me, that is pretty disturbing.
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How real does the illusion feel that is produced by these architectural backdrops?
Quite real. In particular, the training grounds of the US Army in the Mojave Desert, surrounded by an open landscape, manage to convey to visitors a rather familiar and urban experience. This effect can be increased by use of particular tricks: for instance, the Army has employed more than 300 actors who are supposed to imitate small town life in the Middle East. This is complemented by equipment and furnishing, even fake fruit for the market stands.
Is this why, for observers, the distinction between a normal and a Potemkin village can become blurry?
That is true, but only in specific instances. Eventually you recognize that you aren’t in an inhabited settlement that has developed over time, but rather a mock-up, albeit crafted in a very sophisticated manner. The dominating feeling that I have in such places is, always, loneliness – and emptiness.
Many such places that you visited are secluded from the outside world. Military training facilities, for example – how can you as a photographer access these places?
Truthfully, it isn’t easy, which is also the reason why my photo work for this project depended on a very long research and organization phase. The first and basic question is, where to find such facilities? When it comes to bureaucratic structures of the military, there isn’t much available public information. Once you find something, it is important to navigate through the chaos of bureaucracy: Who is responsible for the object, who can provide you with a permit to visit it? Quite often I had to dig deep into the organizational structure of the Army – hoping that my request wasn’t ignored by the responsible officials.
“There are a number of military architects. Their job is to design settings that reflect the situation in current conflict zones as precisely as possible.”
Within your research, were you able to find out who is actually tasked with planning and designing such mock villages used by the military?
There are a number of military architects. Their job is to design settings that reflect the situation in current conflict zones as precisely as possible. In recent decades armed forces of European countries were involved in conflicts in the Middle East, in particular. The response to this were mock villages that recreate the typical settlement structures found in those countries. For this purpose, the architects design street patterns, places and buildings of note, such as mosques and minarets, by following authentic examples. The aim is to enable soldiers to prepare for their mission according to conditions that match the reality on the ground as much as possible. Planning and design tends to be rather detailed, for example, in the case of stair riser heights and tread depths.
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What needs to be considered in such cases?
Stair risers and treads can have different dimensions depending on which part of the world they are built in. Different than what we are used to, at least. Treads can be shallower, risers can be taller. In the case of urban warfare, it can be fatal if soldiers aren’t prepared for such details.
“Something that I never encountered in these places was an actual and authentic atmosphere of everyday urban life.”
Beyond all attention to detail, is there something that can’t be reproduced artificially when planning and designing such buildings or cities?
Something that I never encountered in these places was an actual and authentic atmosphere of everyday urban life. The mock towns that serve military purposes certainly don’t pay attention to that circumstance. Yet, even when the attempt is made to create a real habitable city based on a Potemkin-like architectural approach, that atmosphere never comes to life. It is dependent on social experiences and interactions to a much higher degree than a particular kind of architectural environment. In the sparsely populated urban copies of China, for instance, even the most luxurious building facades can’t deny that they completely lack this particular quality. The atmosphere here is quite spooky.
The Greek photographer George Marazakis considers the Anthropozian as a concept and title for a series dealing with a new epoch caused by human greed and the urge to spread. His images are so powerful, so memorable, that we published one as the Big Picture in topos 106.
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The grass has withered, the soil is parched. Anything that still has a bit of life in it has to be protected behind glass, in another climate zone. Is there a flaming inferno at a distance, yet threatening to come closer?
In his mystical series A cure for Anthropocene, photographer George Marazakis looks at the link between civilization and nature, thus addressing the transformation of the landscape through human activity.
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He equates the earth with an organism that has been afflicted with a disease called “human beings” – the Anthropocene as an age of self-destruction. Marazakis takes photographs on his native Crete – during the winter, in the diffident, soft light. At first, his pictures tempt us to take pleasure in their apparent aesthetics. A second glance, however, leaves us somewhat contemplative, musing about the traces humans leave on the surface of the earth, on the landscape, hence changing them forever.
What happens in that very special moment in urban space when a situation is about to, but hasn’t yet happened? These moments that consist of boundaries between time, space and object only last for a few seconds and yet feel as if they were frozen in time. Wei Chang, a photographer based in Taipei portrays cityscapes and people who become involved with urban landscapes. Although the photos of this series often show busy places, Wei Chang tries to find quite moments in those scenes. There is no specific action, people seem anonymous, emotionless, even faceless. But within this borderline anonymity, she succeeds in giving the city and its users importance. If only for a moment.
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Find out more about Topos #104 Borders.
Nests, dams and lodges: Animals can be very gifted builders indeed! On his trip around the world, photographer Ingo Arndt spent time taking pictures of animal-built architecture – from the ingenious construction of beaver dams to the structural wonder of anthills.
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Order your personal copy here and read the full article
The city is a matrix that cannot be apprehended in its entirety at once. You cannot visit more than one place at a time. Circumventing this limitation, the French architect and photographer Jérémie Dru found a way to perceive the city – in his case Paris, his hometown – from more than just one point of view. He freezes the city’s moments and overlays them. By that, Dru puts the observer between two places and into a dimension where time and space seem to have no meaning at all.
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In the current copy of Topos – Time, Jérémie Dru shows his art work “Un voyageur incertain”. As a photographer, he practices with the intuition that there are elusive realities intrinsic to the city. One of the oldest conceptions of the city, one by which civilization has sought to explain itself to itself, is to see it as a reduction of the cosmos to the human scale. Thus he explores the urban space in search of those faces that are imperceptible to our eyes, as did the artists of surrealism or the New Vision in the early twentieth century. They considered the analogue camera as a way to perfect and complete our eyes. In his book Peinture, photographie, film et autres écrits sur la photographie, László Moholy-Nagy says: “The camera leads us to truths that we cannot see with our eyes, which cannot be observed and become visible with the camera.” Photography, in other words, gives us access to truths that cannot be perceived relying on the perceptual apparatus of the human body alone.
Transforming the space
His approach consists not only in overprinting two images, but in confusing the lines and vanishing points that compose them. The two images become inseparable from one another, and they are governed by one perspective. In this way, the architecture of the place is transformed. By folding architectural lines on themselves, they recompose urban spaces-times with multiple properties, sometimes paradoxical. A ceiling can be the sky, the mineral can also be vegetal. The architecture of the places deceives the traveller, and the city takes on aspects of a labyrinth. Photography makes it possible to build worlds on the border between fiction and reality. It shows the hidden complexity of the world and the cosmos, inscribed in the city and in architecture.
Vita
Jérémie Dru is an architect with a passion for photography. He started research into the perception of urban spaces on completing his studies at the École Nationale Supérieure d’Architecture in Paris in 2012. Find more of his work here: http://jeremiedru.com
You find the whole article “A City close up” by Jérémie Dru the 100th copy of Topos Magazine!
Photojournalist Michael St Maur Sheil has been visiting the battlefields of the First World War for several years. On his excursions he has discovered landscapes of great beauty and tranquility that still show the scars of war. His work resulted in an exhibition and a book titled Fields of Battle, Lands of Peace. Here he offers us an insight into his work and thoughts.
Beaumont Hamel British Cemetery, Somme
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The British attack on the Somme on 1 July 1916 was a catastrophe with almost 60,000 casualties, of whom almost 20,000 were killed. This photograph is taken from the German position overlooking the British positions, which were in the hedge on the left of the photograph: the cemetery in the centre of the field tells the story of that day. Today, the cemetery is simply a garden within the landscape, but the 179 gravestones for the men whose bodies once littered this now peaceful field reveal the darker history of this pastoral scene.
Tyne Cot Cemetery, Flanders
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With just under 12,000 graves and a memorial to almost 34,000 men who have no known grave, this is the largest British Commonwealth cemetery in the world. The sheer mass of headstones makes the space almost impossible to comprehend, but I felt that somehow I had to match the words of King George V when he visited here just after the war: “I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war”. I was in England when I heard there was a rare snowfall in Flanders so I caught an overnight ferry and managed to get this shot of the cemetery in its silent contemplation.
Read more in our current 99th Topos magazine
