Peter Bialobrzeski Bücher

In seiner neuen fotografischen Studie kehrt Peter Bialobrzeski nach Asien zurück, nachdem er sich zuvor mit Deutschland beschäftigt hat. Auf Einladung des Goethe-Instituts hat er Mumbai besucht, dessen Vorstädte zu den größten und dicht besiedelten urbanen Räumen der Welt zählen. Anders als im westlichen Verständnis von Suburbia zeigt sich hier eine dystopische Realität, geprägt von Müll, Luftverschmutzung und Lärm. Das Stadtbild wird dominiert von einer chaotischen Mischung aus halbverfallenen Gebäuden, modernen Hochhäusern, Slums, Plakatwänden und Hochstraßen, mit einer unglaublichen Bevölkerungsdichte von 22.000 Menschen pro Quadratkilometer. Bialobrzeski verdichtet in seinen neuen Bildern die intensiven Eindrücke dieser Stadt, die zwischen lokalen Traditionen und den Kräften der Globalisierung oszilliert. Seine Arbeiten wurden international ausgestellt, und er hat mehrere Auszeichnungen erhalten, darunter den World Press Award. Der begleitende Text stammt von Rahul Mehrotra, einem praktizierenden Architekten in Mumbai und Professor für Stadtplanung an der Harvard University.

In nineteenth-century Calcutta, a wealthy Indian elite flourished under British rule, creating unique mansions that blend Mughal and classical architecture. Today, these once-grand structures are deteriorating. Guided by Peter Biaolobrzeski, photography students documented this cultural heritage for the Kolkata Heritage Photo Project, culminating in a unique book.

Oktober 2016. In Kooperation mit der Westfalenpost und unter Anleitung des Fotografen Peter Bialobrzeski haben sich Studierende der Hochschule für Künste Bremen in den Städten Arnsberg, Hagen, Olpe und Siegen mit dem Thema Strukturwandel fotografisch auseinandergesetzt. In zehn individuellen Positionen entsteht nicht nur ein Spannungsbogen zwischen Stadt und Land, Tradition und Moderne sowie Jung und Alt sondern ein subjektives und zeitgenössisches Portrait der Region Südwestfalen. Mit Fotografien von Laura Achenbach, Yoshiko Jentczak, Sabine Lewandowski, Ricardo Nunes, Stefanie Preuin, Christina Rabe, Christina Stohn, Marvin Systermans, Avani Tanya und Aleksandra Weber.

Nur wer sich seiner selbst gewiss ist, zieht AUS und findet neue Wege. Das Magazin AUS der Hochschule für Künste Bremen bezieht Position im Miteinander von Mode und Fotografie, Philosophie und Grafik. AUS handelt vom Eigensinn und Draußensein – lebensnah, verstörend und vertraut. AUS stellt die Arbeiten junger Gestalterinnen und Gestalter vor, deren Mode von Fotografinnen und Fotografen aus subjektiver Perspektive interpretiert wurde. Sie findet ihre Entsprechung in der Grafik, trifft sich mit Richard Buckminster Fuller oder zieht mit Henry David Thoreau in den Wald. Assoziationen rufen neue Bilder hervor. Das Material entwickelt ein Eigenleben, entfaltet sich und wird zum Medium. AUS ist ein Dialog zwischen den Disziplinen.

During his travels through China, Peter Bialobrzeski was fascinated by the so-called nail houses. Surrounded by tall, newly constructed buildings, these houses have been earmarked for demolition, but their owners resolutely refuse to vacate. In his thought-provoking series the artist photographs these isolated structures, often in the evening hours, when the brightly lit interiors convey the domestic comfort that these homes provide for their owners, despite all the cracks in the walls. Peter Bialobrzeski (* 1961 in Wolfsburg) uses his camera to offer these renitent structures moral support. Following the publication of Case Study Homes and Informal Arrangements, this striking series completing the Habitat trilogy poses uncomfortable questions to the viewer. It also emphatically underscores the fundamental right of every human being to a home and sense of security.

Peter Bialobrzeski's fascinating and disturbing collection of photographs from the skyscraper landscapes of Asian megacities, Neon Tigers, enchanted many. It was selected as one of the best-designed German books of 2004 and awarded the German Photography Book Prize. After his return from Asia, Bialobrzeski spent more than two years traveling through his native Germany. Heimat, which is German for "homeland," is the result. For Germans, Heimat is a rather difficult term, embodying conflicting destiny and coincidence, sentimental kitsch for pensioners and revisionists, and lost paradise or childhood trauma. In Bialobrzeski's own words, "Having a home means having roots, which is not the same as being rooted to the spot." And since he is more interested in creating images than in detailing the places from which they spring, Heimat is "not a book about Germany as homeland per se." Rather, it creates a fixed image of "a personalized bit of visual and cultural history that goes beyond Germany's dark past, its reunification, and the 'German disease.'" Bialobrzeski's haunting new photographs act as projection surfaces for modern humankind's yearning for home and for nature--an homage at once to German Romanticism and to the works of contemporary American color photographers.

In "Heimat," his previous collection of photographs published by Hatje Cantz, German photographer Peter Bialobrzeski, born in 1961, gave us pictures of his homeland that showed it as it had never been seen before. "Photo International" deemed it "one of the most beautiful and significant photography books this year." Even before that, Bialobrzeski's critically acclaimed exploration of the Asian megacity phenomenon, "Neon Tigers," had made him a common topic of debate on the international photography scene. Bialobrzeski's gift is for the portrayal of epic sweep in urban vistas and of the energies that inhabit and galvanize them. In "Lost in Transition" the photographer applies his grand vision to the transformation of wasteland areas, many of which are located on the peripheries of cities. The photographs were taken in more than 28 cities (including Hamburg, Dubai, New York, Singapore, New Delhi and Kuala Lumpur) and 14 countries and trace the transition from old to new, from the familiar to the abstract, from the dilapidated to the renewed. These images are as seductive and sublime as nineteenth-century Romantic paintings, but their apparent beauty is deceptive. As in his earlier works, Bialobrzeski always tests and pushes at the limitations of the documentary image itself.

An ironic take on the Case Study House Program--initiated in 1945 by Arts and Architecture magazine in an effort to develop low-priced single-family homes by architects such as Richard Neutra and Charles and Ray Eames--German photographer Peter Bialobrzeski's Case Study Homes was shot at the Baseco compound, a squatter camp near the Port of Manila, which is home to an estimated 70,000 people. As Bialobrzeski was considering the series--startling images of provisional structures fashioned from slats, cardboard, corrugated metal and other cast-off materials and refuse--Lehman Brothers Bank collapsed and the media declared a global economic crisis. These recent events lend resonance to Bialobrzeski's images, which recall the photographs of impoverished rural Americans commissioned by the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s. Conceived as a sketchbook for a larger project, the images evidence the human will to survive and a profound resourcefulness.

Preface by Peter Bialobrzeski. Text by Alex Ruhle.