4100 Duisburg: “… tearing at the seams”

“A gar­bage can, occa­sio­nally, to me at least, can be beau­ti­ful.
That’s because you are see­ing. Some people are able to see that –
and feel it. I lean toward the enchant­ment, the visual power of
the aes­the­ti­cally rejec­ted object.”[1]

Walker Evans

 

Anyone who grew up in Duisburg during the fif­ties and six­ties, as did the aut­hor of these obser­va­tions, expe­ri­en­ced a vibrant city with its own uni­que cha­rac­ter: eco­no­mi­cally thri­ving and cul­tu­rally ambi­tious. In 1960, thanks to its geo­gra­phi­cal loca­tion on the Rhine and Ruhr rivers, Duisburg ran­ked among the German muni­ci­pa­li­ties with the hig­hest pro-capita income. Viewed from the south along the bor­der to Düsseldorf loo­king towards the nort­hern edge of the city, which opens up towards the Lower Rhine region, the indus­trial plants of heavy indus­try lined the banks of the Rhine like pearls on a string. Even today, their names still evoke shades of Germany’s eco­no­mic mira­cle fol­lo­wing the Second World War and call to mind a cul­ture of once pri­vate com­pa­nies that emer­ged during the mid-19th cen­tury: Demag, Mannesmann, Kupferhütte, Krupp, Thyssen, and Stinnes. A family busi­ness, the König Brewery in Beeck, lent a spe­cial fla­vor to the city’s eco­no­mic struc­ture by pro­du­cing a Pilsener beer with a bit­ter note that was widely known throug­hout Germany. Beer, the “bread” of the working man, was bre­wed in every city in the Ruhr region; König Pilsener, howe­ver, enjoyed a repu­ta­tion of exclu­si­vity. On many days the brewery’s unmistaka­ble aroma waf­ted over the ent­ire quar­ter. It was situa­ted not far from the expan­sive Thyssenhütte mill, which exten­ded all the way to Hamborn and expor­ted its high-quality iron and steel pro­ducts all over the globe. The har­bor rep­re­sen­ted the city’s true life­line: situa­ted at its cen­ter around the con­flu­ence of the Ruhr and Rhine rivers, it reached far out into the urban topo­gra­phy, for­ming its core and giving it cohe­sion. “At no time and at no place was the Ruhr district ever beau­ti­ful,” was how his­to­rian Ulrich Herbert once cha­rac­te­ri­zed the region of his fore­be­ars.[2] This was also true of Duisburg. Once known as the “Montan City” (deri­ved from Latin mons in refe­rence to the city’s coal and steel indus­try), it was nevert­he­l­ess an urban orga­nism with its own unmistaka­ble iden­tity, and it stood out – or so it seems in retro­s­pect – from among the mono­tone cities along the Ruhr and Emscher rivers. This was because the vita­lity that cha­rac­te­ri­zed its eco­no­mic life was matched by an ear­nest cul­tu­ral com­mit­ment. Like all cities in the Ruhr district, Duisburg was also gover­ned for deca­des by the Social Democrat Party (SPD), which enjoyed an abso­lute majo­rity. In those days, howe­ver, enligh­ten­ment, edu­ca­tion, and cul­ture were inviolable ele­ments of the party’s self-image, with which they sought to lead the working class toward self-determination and self-responsibility in accor­dance with their foun­ding prin­ci­ples. In Duisburg these aspi­ra­ti­ons were given credi­bi­lity by two lord mayors in par­ti­cu­lar, August Seeling and Josef Krings, both of whom were in office for many years. They cham­pio­ned a cul­tu­ral dimen­sion of life that they con­side­red unali­enable. Together with Düsseldorf, Duisburg has long been home to the renow­ned thea­ter com­mu­nity “Deutsche Oper am Rhein”; the city spon­so­red the inter­na­tio­nally reco­gnized Lehmbruck-Museum for sculp­ture, which was named after Wilhelm Lehm–
bruck, a native of Duisburg’s Meiderich quar­ter; and it was only natu­ral that major inter­na­tio­nal news­pa­pers were avail­able at the main library in the heart of the city. And then came the day when Lord Mayor Krings threa­tened his party with resi­gna­tion in order to prevent a bud­get cut that would have affec­ted the bal­let. Duisburg, so it appears to this chro­ni­cler, was “spe­cial” in those days and did not con­sider its­elf part of the Ruhr district. Until the mid-seventies there was a sign­post in the cen­ter of town that poin­ted in two direc­tions: west towards “The Netherlands” and east towards “The Ruhr district.” 

From today’s per­spec­tive, this image of an intact city has some­thing of a fairy-tale qua­lity. The indus­trial restruc­tu­ring of the Ruhr district was imple­men­ted much too late, and the after­ef­fects have long been con­spi­cuous in the “Montan City” and its crum­bling infra­struc­ture. Duisburg at pre­sent is a “poor house.” It is deep in debt. It can­not con­tain the costs of its actual expen­ditures, and it has a dis­pro­por­tio­na­tely high popu­la­tion of immi­grants who are dif­fi­cult to inte­grate. The his­to­ri­cal back­ground that led to this situa­tion is briefly out­lined in the fol­lo­wing. An elite car­tel com­pri­sed of busi­ness, uni­ons, and regio­nal poli­tics clo­sed its eyes for deca­des to the fact that the age of heavy indus­try had defi­ni­tely come to an end in the Ruhr district. The under­ly­ing struc­tu­ral shift was igno­red and coun­ter­mea­su­res were not taken. An eco­no­mic struc­ture that had been irre­co­ver­a­bly lost for quite some time was prop­ped up with large state sub­si­dies. And the social fabric began to fray as well. “In con­se­quence, this led to great social segre­ga­tion, to an over-aging of the Ruhr district, to dis­pro­por­tio­nally high unem­ploy­ment. It is also to blame for the fact that two-thirds of all ado­le­scents under eigh­teen in Gladbeck or Herten grow up in poverty or in pre­ca­rious cir­cum­stan­ces and that seventy, eighty, or even one hund­red per­cent of ele­men­tary school child­ren there have a so-called “migra­tion back­ground.”[3]

The ter­rain that Laurenz Berges pati­ently explo­red in Duisburg over the past few years is com­pa­ra­ble to the fore­go­ing descrip­tion of the Ruhr district’s deeply sea­ted com­mu­nal misery. He mainly kept to the quar­ters that were for­merly sites of heavy indus­try and are now suf­fe­ring the most from the effects of struc­tu­ral change. A gene­ral decline in the qua­lity of urban life is obvious. These pho­to­graphs never attempt to por­tray con­crete exam­ples of social mal­de­ve­lop­ment, howe­ver. Berges is instead inte­res­ted in how to make the things in the image speak in order to ren­der under­stan­da­ble a dimen­sion of expe­ri­ence: inte­ri­ors, archi­tec­tu­ral details, frag­ments of nature, a per­son here and there. Berges’s mode of work is indi­rect. His pho­to­graphs create a par­al­lel rea­lity that trans­cends details and seeks a holistic visual effect all the more emphatically.

In Duisburg he found images of a void that is fil­led with a fun­da­men­tal silence. A fee­ling of for­lorn­ness and dis­ori­en­ta­tion seems to lie over the city, a con­di­tion known as bardo in Buddhism: that is to say, a tran­si­tio­nal state bet­ween death and rebirth. This explains the uni­que inten­sity of the visual effect. Light and silence are its mes­sen­gers. Soft day­light fills the rooms, inside and out, with an int­an­gi­ble volume. The matte appearance of the colors inten­si­fies their effect because they are no lon­ger a super­fi­cial mani­fes­ta­tion, but cor­po­real instead. They almost seem to sink into the image sur­face. There is an unhur­ried­ness of obser­va­tion inherent in these pic­tures that com­mu­ni­ca­tes its­elf to the viewer. Life in its puta­tive flee­ting­ness is brought to a halt and attains ful­fill­ment in ubiety.

Berges’s images describe a path lea­ding inward. It is not just a mat­ter of por­tray­ing the exter­nal pheno­mena that cha­rac­te­rize an urban land­scape; an exis­ten­tial dimen­sion is at issue. What is our state of being in the world? Photographically cap­tu­ring the recur­ring cycles of waning life (which, it should be poin­ted out, are regu­larly fol­lo­wed by new periods of eco­no­mic and cul­tu­ral pros­pe­rity) rep­res­ents the main focus of his art. In his pho­to­graphs, Duisburg’s sce­nery bespeaks the tran­si­ence and melan­ch­oly that adhere to human exis­tence. Their silence is only off­set by the dimen­sion of visual beauty that mani­fests its­elf in light and colors. This dimen­sion alone implies a pro­s­pect of redemption.

With this per­spec­tive, Berges is argu­ably the only pho­to­gra­pher of our time who fol­lows in the foots­teps of two giants of pho­to­gra­phy from the pre­vious cen­tury, namely Eugène Atget (1857–1927) and Walker Evans (1903–1975). These two in par­ti­cu­lar dedi­ca­ted them­sel­ves to por­tray­ing a cul­ture grown old and things caught up in the pro­cess of decay. In Paris, Atget pho­to­gra­phed buil­dings, some of which were built in the Middle Ages, had sur­vi­ved Baron Haussmann’s urban rene­wal cam­paign, and were due to be torn down in the fore­see­able future. He also cap­tu­red the parks and aristo­cra­tic resi­den­ces in the vicinity of the French capi­tal that were slowly fal­ling into dis­re­pair, thus bea­ring wit­ness to the end of the for­mer First Estate’s social import­ance. He was dri­ven by a fasci­na­tion with the cha­rac­te­ristic beauty of things in decline, and it was his wish to pre­serve in pho­to­graphs that which was alre­ady doo­med to destruc­tion for future generations.

Whereas Atget acted almost unconsciously, gui­ded, it seems, only by his yearning for the refrac­ted light of the past in order to find a reflec­tion of him­self ther­ein,[4], we encoun­ter in Evans a pro­foundly deli­be­rate, intel­lec­tually sover­eign artist who was always well-aware of the aes­the­tic dimen­sion of his work. He too felt drawn to the old archi­tec­ture on the plan­ta­ti­ons of the American South, both to the man­si­ons as well as to the slave quar­ters, which they built them­sel­ves from self-fired bricks. He was equally fasci­na­ted by the 19th cen­tury woo­den Victorian homes in the vicinity of Boston, which were desi­gned and embellis­hed by local car­pen­ters. From 1930 on he dedi­ca­ted one of his first lar­ger works to them: an early testi­mony to his love of a uni­que ver­na­cu­lar style that was born from the work of local crafts­men. He viewed it as “clas­si­cism of the ordi­nary,” a style that was not at all aware of its own aes­the­tic dimen­sion. In Evans’s opi­nion, it was supe­rior to the tra­di­tio­nal high art exhi­bi­ted in muse­ums because, in it, the life energy of ordi­nary Americans mani­fes­ted its­elf directly – and it could also reveal its­elf in pri­vate living spaces, churches, shops, and on signs. When Evans pho­to­gra­phed New York City’s Pennsylvania Station in 1963, the buil­ding was alre­ady empty and sche­du­led for demo­li­tion. He did so in order to memo­ria­lize the archi­tec­ture and inte­rior details because he was con­scious of the value of a natio­nal his­to­ri­cal edi­fice that was doo­med to destruc­tion and could never be rebuilt. His inte­rest in such mani­fes­ta­ti­ons of history did not, as he put it, have anything to do with sen­ti­men­tal nost­al­gia. There was, instead, a culturo-historical dimen­sion invol­ved when some­thing was in the pro­cess of exit­ing the stage of history. From the old and pas­sing aspects in our cul­ture of ever­y­day life emer­ges a quite dis­tinct spi­ri­tual impulse, a force that con­fronts the point­less motion of the per­pe­tual “new.”[5]

Evans’s near rap­turous love for the senec­titude of things had its cor­rec­tive in a strict for­mal con­scious­ness, which he found in moder­nist lite­ra­ture, and in which he was quite well-read. The wri­t­ings of James Joyce, T. S. Eliot, and E. E. Cummings coun­ted among his gui­ding lights, but he always con­side­red 19th cen­tury French lite­ra­ture, and espe­cially Charles Baudelaire und Gustave Flaubert, as his bench­marks. With regard to Flaubert in par­ti­cu­lar, Evans deter­mined that his own art had pro­fi­ted from the author’s “rea­lism and natu­ra­lism” as well as from his “objec­tivity of tre­at­ment; the non-appearance of aut­hor.”[6]

Berges’s pho­to­gra­phic art, which is said to owe its first impulse to an encoun­ter with a book by Evans,[7], also has such a liter­ary qua­lity: its visual ver­na­cu­lar balan­ces on the thin bor­der­line bet­ween con­ten­tual refe­rence and poe­tic silence. It does not really lend its­elf to descrip­tion via ver­bal dis­course. When con­tem­pla­ting the pho­to­graphs taken in Duisburg and their aut­hor, we are for this rea­son remin­ded of a liter­ary pre­cur­sor who roamed the streets of Paris daily, roughly a cen­tury ago, and expe­ri­en­ced the urban decay around him as a reflec­tion of his own inner rea­lity: Malte Laurids Brigge. His obser­va­tions, pen­ned by Rainer
Maria Rilke, rank among the key texts of early 20th cen­tury lite­ra­ture in which the expe­ri­ence of a far-reaching cri­sis of cul­ture and the indi­vi­dual finds expres­sion. What defi­nes this text is an empha­sis on visual per­cep­tion, which cha­rac­te­ri­zes its approach to rea­lity in gene­ral. Not the sligh­test detail escapes this gaze; it makes the world speak, in a com­pre­hen­sive sense. It is a mode of per­cep­tion best known to us from the visual arts as well as pho­to­gra­phy. It is no coin­ci­dence that Rilke del­ved deeply into the art of Rodin and Cézanne prior to wri­t­ing Malte Laurids Brigge. What he lear­ned there, he named “objec­tive nar­ra­tion”: an objec­tivity in which the obser­ved beco­mes form, wit­hout a supera­bun­dance of emo­tio­nal ara­bes­ques. To con­clude, let us lis­ten to this voice and its obser­va­tions: “Will people believe there are hou­ses like this? […] Houses? But, to be exact, they were hou­ses that were no lon­ger there. Houses that had been demolis­hed, top to bot­tom. […] You could see inside them. On the dif­fe­rent floors you could see walls with the paper still sti­cking to them, and here and there signs of where floors or cei­lings had been fixed. Adjoining the inside walls and run­ning the whole width of the house was a dirty-white expanse of wall across which craw­led in unut­ter­a­bly dis­gus­ting, worms­mooth, bowel-like form the open rust-flecked groove for the toi­let pipe. […] The dog­ged life that had been lived in these rooms refu­sed to be obli­te­ra­ted. It was still there; it clung to the nails that were left, it lin­ge­red on the remai­ning strip of floor­boar­ding, it was hudd­led up under the little that was left of a cor­ner sec­tion. […] And from these sur­faces that had been blue, green and yel­low and were now framed by bro­ken runs of demolis­hed par­ti­tion wall, arose the air from these lives, this ten­acious, shift­less, fuggy air that no wind had yet dis­per­sed. […] It’s the fact that I reco­gnized it that makes it hor­ri­ble. I reco­gnize ever­y­thing here; it pas­ses into me wit­hout fur­ther ado; it finds a home in me.”[8] Indeed, this text could also be viewed as a forerun­ner of Laurenz Berges’s encoun­ter with the city of Duisburg. His pati­ent mean­de­ring through the streets, obser­ving, see­king, dis­co­ve­r­ing, returning, the set­ting of the camera, com­pa­ring and selec­ting the images: all these things attest to the con­flu­ence of a city and art. Duisburg may be a poor and, in many pla­ces, rams­hackle city, yet Laurenz Berges’s view of it gives it a home in the realm of art. Not every city can make that claim.

 


[1] Walker Evans, Walker Evans at Work, New York: Harper & Row, 1982, p. 220.

[2] Ulrich Herbert, “Schön war es nir­gends und nie,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 21 December 2018, p. 13. 

[3] Ulrich Herbert, ibid.

[4] Evans viewed Atget as one of the foun­ders of modern pho­to­gra­phy, and his own aes­the­tics owed much to him. It is note­wor­thy how, muta­tis mutan­dis, Evans’s cha­rac­te­riza­tion of Atget’s art reads like a descrip­tion of Laurenz Berges’s pho­to­gra­phy. “It is pos­si­ble to read into his pho­to­graphs so many things he may never have for­mu­la­ted to him­self. […] His gene­ral note is lyri­cal under­stan­ding of the street, trai­ned obser­va­tion of it, spe­cial fee­ling for patina, eye for revea­ling detail, over all of which is thrown a poe­try which is not ‘the poe­try of the street’ or ‘the poe­try of Paris,’ but the pro­jec­tion of Atget’s per­son.” Walker Evans, “The Reappearance of Photography,” in Hound & Horn, #5 (October–December 1931), quo­ted by Jeff Rosenheim with Alexis Schwarzenbach (eds.), Unclassified. A Walker Evans Anthology, Zurich/Berlin/New York: Scalo, 2000, p. 81.

[5] “I’ve cer­tainly suf­fe­red when phi­lis­ti­nes look at cer­tain works of mine having to do with the past, and remark, ‘Oh, how nost­al­gic.’ I hate that word. To be nost­al­gic is to be sen­ti­men­tal. To be inte­res­ted in what you see that is pas­sing out of history, even if it’s a trol­ley car you’ve found, that’s not an act of nost­al­gia. You could read Proust as nost­al­gia, but that’s not what Proust had in mind at all.” Leslie Katz, “Interview with Walker Evans,” in Art in America, March–April 1971, Vol. 59, No. 2, p. 87.

[6] “I know now that Flaubert’s esthe­tic is abso­lu­tely mine. Flaubert’s method I think I incor­po­ra­ted unconsciously, but any­way used it in two ways: his rea­lism and natu­ra­lism both, and his objec­tivity of tre­at­ment; the non-appearance of aut­hor, the non-subjectivity.” Leslie Katz, ibid., p. 84.

[7] “When Laurenz Berges dis­co­vered a copy of First and Last by Walker Evans at a books­tore in his home­town of Cloppenburg in 1985, he bought it with his birth­day money. It was his first book of pho­to­graphs, and it still means a great deal to him today.” Thomas Weski, “Indirekte Erzählung,” in Laurenz Berges. Frühauf Danach, Munich: Schirmer/Mosel, 2011, p. 89.

[8] Rainer Maria Rilke, “The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge,” trans­la­ted from the German by William Needham, web.