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Increasing salinisation and heavy pollution from intensive agriculture in the Coachella Valley are causing the ecosystem of California's largest inland lake to collapse. The recreational area of the ‘California Riviera’ has turned into a stinking ecological nightmare. What remains are fish bones, abandoned trailers, drug production sites and an unbearable stench.

Cows

Kallitypes, toned with gold, 2015

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Hotel 17 – a visual research on rooms and people

Series of 16 colour photographs, 1989

A small hotel in New York City predominantly inhabited by permanent guests – a microcosm that mirrors the social reality of low-income residents in Manhattan end of the 1980’s.

Annäherung und Verlust - Imagined Geography

Group of 8 B/W triptychs, 100 x 210 cm, 1991

On the one hand, the work tries to deconstruct the Eurocentric view on Africa that has been formed by the media (especially colonial photography), and on the other hand it deals with basic themes of human life that are substantiated in universally valid archetypes.

The texts underneath the images are excerpts of poems written by contemporary African writers.

Berlin Germany 1989 (selection)

 B/W photographs, 1989

 Documenting the changes and events that took place in Berlin 1989, I travelled frequently to East and West-Berlin trying to capture the atmosphere, shifting (staggering/floating) between order and chaos.

 Captions:

 1: Berlin Wall with GDR border guard, November

2: Opernplatz Leipzig, GDR, Monday morning, October

3: Demonstration Opernplatz Leipzig and surrounding, GDR, Monday evening, October

4: Start of demolition work of Berlin Wall, West German security personnel and media people waiting. November

5: People from the West part are flocking to the first open section, early morning, November

6: Nearby section that is to be torn down, West Berliners sitting on the wall, waiting for the things to come

7: The news spread quickly in East and West, bringing thousands to the open section.

8: Polenmarkt, Kreuzberg Westberlin. Loosend visa regulations attracted many Polish people to come and sell their cheap merchandise and return home with Westmark

9: Polenmarkt, Kreuzberg Westberlin. Loosend visa regulations attracted many Polish people to come and sell their cheap merchandise and return home with Westmark

10: Former Checkpoint in Berlin-Mitte. Poster advertises the sale of thrown out, genuine border signs.

11: East Berlin, shop window with note: ‘anarchical creativity instead of all-German consumption’

12: East Berlin’s public transport-system, unchanged. January 1990

MIDGARD

 Mixed media installation, 1995 (Sound, 13 colour transparencies 130 x 260 cm), 2 videoprojections)

 This installation was specially built for the belltower of Trinitatis Church in Cologne. The tower has five levels and level two to five each has 4 big windows that I used as lighboxes for my photographs (huge transparencies) and for the videoprojections.

The tower as a way to get closer to the light, the sky and the cosmos is connected to the human enquiry into one’s own position within the universe and the bigger powers that direct and challenge us.

1st. of May Celebrations East Berlin, GDR, 1988 (selection)

 B/W photographs, 1988

The 1st. of May parade was one of the big annual events in the former GDR. It was the time to show the achievements and progress made by the country’s production sector, its co-operatives and its people (‘Held der Arbeit’). It was also parading time for the state organized youth clubs like the ‘Freie Deutsche Jugend – Free German Youth’.

The people could catch a glimpse of the country’s leader, Erich Honecker, and other senior members of the government.

No individual captions