The photographs are from a visit to the UNESCO World Heritage
‘Zollverein’ and ‘Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord’, two enormous former coal mining industrial sites in Germany
partially adapted into a museum, events and the rest reformed into a park.
This
series, inspired by Bernd & Hilla Becher’s work of ‘The Water
Towers 1972-2009’, should be seen as an attempt to be an extension to
their collection. The pictures are more of a critique of the
monumentalisation or the museumification of the past. It is a stroll
through the late 19th-century industrial labyrinth to glorify what was
once a state-of-the-art mining complex, now an unfathomable creature
decomposing in the wild, or at least staged to appear.
It is
impossible to perceive this totality, not just through naked eyes but
through any digital lens. Every part of a ‘whole’ seen in the pictures
extends beyond the frame. Today, the maze-like Folly presents itself as a
never-ending installation showcasing century-old machinery,
mine-workers overalls, Fossils, minerals, etc., an act of cultural
regeneration.