”I some­ti­mes won­der what has led us to spend so many hours stu­dy­ing such sce­nes. But of cour­se we both know. What was it Godard said? … ’For us, the future is more real than the present.’”

Robert Adams in a let­ter to Laurenz Berges 

I

Landscapes are cul­tu­ral spaces. They are based on the per­cep­ti­on, inter­pre­ta­ti­on, and design of man. Irrespective of the occu­pa­ti­on with geo­gra­phi­cal are­as, whe­ther ori­gi­nal or cul­ti­va­ted natu­re, or urban envi­ron­ments infra­struc­tu­ral­ly cha­rac­te­ri­sed by archi­tec­tu­re and trans­port net­works, as cul­tu­ral arte­facts, land­scapes repre­sent a spe­cial aspect of our world­ly expe­ri­ence. This aspect and the respec­ti­ve artis­tic and aes­the­tic pecu­lia­ri­ties have made land­scapes recur­ring the­mes in art and in this case also in pho­to­gra­phy. Since the deve­lo­p­ment of this medi­um and its various visua­li­sa­ti­on methods, aspects of the “sub­li­me” as a recur­ring the­me of natu­re and land­scape ana­ly­sis emer­ge on the one hand, while in the histo­ry of 20^th cen­tu­ry pho­to­gra­phy, it is often rather the unspec­ta­cu­lar and com­mon­place that shift into the artis­tic focus on the basis of a fac­tu­al-docu­men­ta­ry visu­al language.

The colour-pho­to­gra­phic series Cloppenburg from the ear­ly work of Laurenz Berges, pre­sen­ted in this publi­ca­ti­on, can be con­side­red an exam­p­le of this. It was crea­ted in ¹⁹⁸⁹⁄₉₀ in the artist’s home­town of Lower Saxony, Germany fol­lo­wing a one-year stay in New York. The artist has been living in Dusseldorf for more than 25 years now but is still has per­so­nal and fami­ly con­nec­tions to Cloppenburg.

In the con­text of the inter­na­tio­nal con­tem­po­ra­ry artis­tic pho­to­gra­phy, Laurenz Berges has pre­do­mi­nant­ly gai­ned renown for his muted colour pic­tu­re stages of inte­ri­or details of aban­do­ned rooms and depo­pu­la­ted places, which oscil­la­te bet­ween abs­trac­tion and redu­ced nar­ra­ti­ve moments. These include the series Kasernen, crea­ted in the 1990s, in which he tur­ned his atten­ti­on to aban­do­ned Russian army bar­racks in East Germany fol­lo­wing reuni­fi­ca­ti­on as a pic­to­ri­al the­me, as well as the series Etzweiler show­ing inte­ri­ors of aban­do­ned vil­la­ges in the lig­ni­te mining area around Duren, and later motifs crea­ted in Duisburg and the Ruhr val­ley. If one con­siders the fun­da­men­tal aspects of tran­si­ence and abs­tract image details in the­se later series of works, it is evi­dent that the­se cha­rac­te­ristics are alre­a­dy pre­sent in cer­tain motifs of the Cloppenburg series.

II

Even befo­re stu­dy­ing pho­to­gra­phy, first in Essen and later with under Bernd Becher in Dusseldorf, Laurenz Berges had alre­a­dy dealt with the deve­lo­p­ment and tra­di­ti­on of 20^th cen­tu­ry land­scape and docu­men­ta­ry pho­to­gra­phy and its cen­tral repre­sen­ta­ti­ves in the field of black and white pho­to­gra­phy, such as Walker Evans or Robert Frank in America, or Albert Renger-Patzsch and Heinrich Riebesehl in Germany, as well as the deve­lo­p­ment and impact of American New Color Photography. During the 1970s, Stephen Shore, among others, per­tai­ned to the pho­to­graph­ers who, ori­en­ta­ting towards ever­y­day American land­scapes and socio­lo­gi­cal­ly refe­ren­ti­al the­mes, con­cep­tual­ly devo­ted hims­elf to colour pho­to­gra­phy and who influen­ced deve­lo­p­ments also in German photography.

In addi­ti­on to Bernd and Hilla Becher – who, just as many of the American pho­to­graph­ers named abo­ve, par­ti­ci­pa­ted in the legen­da­ry exhi­bi­ti­on New Topographics. Photographs of a Man-alte­red Landscape in Rochester in ¹⁹⁷⁵⁄₇₆ and who main­tai­ned clo­se cont­act with, say, Stephen Shore – it was first and fore­most Michael Schmidt who invi­ted Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore or Robert Adams to lec­tures at his ‘Workshop for Photography’ in Berlin-Kreuzberg, Germany, thus enab­ling encoun­ters for Laurenz Berges, among others. [1] Later, Laurenz Berges also cul­ti­va­ted a long-stan­ding per­so­nal exch­an­ge with some of them, such as Robert Adams, in the con­text of and fol­lo­wing a group exhi­bi­ti­on cura­ted by Thomas Weski and Heinz Liesbrock in 2002, in which both artists par­ti­ci­pa­ted along­side Joachim Brohm, Bernhard Fuchs and Simone Nieweg. [1]

This exhi­bi­ti­on also addres­sed land­scapes chan­ged by man in urban peri­phe­ral and sett­le­ment are­as. Aspects that are indi­vi­du­al­ly appli­ed to a typi­cal German land­scape in Laurenz Berges’ series Cloppenburg and hence­forth beco­me comprehensible..

III

Cloppenburg can be con­side­red exem­pla­ry for many dis­trict towns and small towns, vil­la­ges and loca­li­ties in Lower Saxony. The dis­trict town, which has grown over seve­ral cen­tu­ries in terms of cul­tu­ral histo­ry, blends into a flat envi­ron­ment of for­mer moor­land and heath­land cha­rac­te­ri­sed by fields, forests, agri­cul­tu­re, and live­stock bree­ding. Reddish-brown, some­ti­mes white­washed brick buil­dings cha­rac­te­ri­se its resi­den­ti­al and func­tion­al archi­tec­tu­re, and unli­ke the most­ly Protestant towns in Lower Saxony, a Roman Catholic popu­la­ti­on is pre­do­mi­nant in Cloppenburg. A pecu­lia­ri­ty that can be ascer­tai­ned as an aspect of socia­li­sa­ti­on in cer­tain parts of the envi­ron­ment and thus also in a few pic­tures of the series by Laurenz Berges.

Concentrating on most­ly unpo­pu­la­ted image details that nevert­hel­ess refer to the human being and the man-made envi­ron­ment, archi­tec­tu­re, eco­no­mic and traf­fic-rela­ted infra­struc­tures, the 52 indi­vi­du­al images in the series com­bi­ne to form a redu­ced nar­ra­ti­ve land­scape tableau with a muted colour sche­me. The iso­la­ted per­sons appearing in some of the pic­tures seem almost humo­rous, some­what remi­nis­cent of film extras, and rather unu­su­al for the rest of the series as well as the later works of Laurenz Berges. As a blur­red figu­re in a car, taken anony­mously from the back on a side­walk or in a ceme­tery, they beco­me repre­sen­ta­ti­ves reve­al­ing a nar­ra­ti­ve refe­rence by the artist to the inha­bi­tants and their lives in Cloppenburg, obser­ved from a distance. Tongues in cheek, even cars park­ed in iso­la­ted places refer to them, now and then.

The images, taken in the given light con­di­ti­ons by day or night in autumn and win­ter with a docu­men­ta­ry visu­al lan­guage, do not focus on the cul­tu­ral-his­to­ri­cal­ly note­wor­t­hy indi­vi­du­al, which Cloppenburg could also offer, but rather on an approach to a land­scape pic­tu­re in which the unspec­ta­cu­lar deve­lo­ps its own expres­si­ve­ness and, with the pho­to­gra­phic per­spec­ti­ves and details cho­sen by Laurenz Berges, a con­cen­tra­ted pic­to­ri­a­li­ty. Recurrently, streets and paths divi­de the pic­to­ri­al spaces with their details of fields, trees, and hou­ses, direc­ting the gaze into hori­zon­tal, ver­ti­cal, and dia­go­nal axes in order to open up per­spec­ti­ves onto pic­to­ri­al hori­zons accor­ding to the clas­si­cal com­po­si­ti­on of land­scape images. In fur­ther images, they gra­dua­te and add rhythm to the pic­to­ri­al space from a clo­se-up view in inter­ac­tion with archi­tec­tu­re, “strips” of fields, adjoi­ning mea­dows, or ver­ti­cal­ly ori­en­ted views through trees. In addi­ti­on, rows of gara­ges, remi­nis­cent of colour field pain­tings, or warehou­ses who­se dif­fe­rent geo­me­tric forms span the pic­to­ri­al space and stand out strikin­gly from their sur­roun­dings, appear as abs­tract aes­the­tic moments in the sequence of images. Different typo­gra­phies of com­pa­ny let­te­rings aes­the­ti­cal­ly situa­te their foun­da­ti­on in various time con­texts, for which some pic­tures with shop win­dow deco­ra­ti­ons, a stage-like gra­dua­ted inte­ri­or with gra­phi­cal­ly striking, flo­ral-orna­men­tal wall­pa­per from – so it seems – the 1970s or the motif with a deco­ra­ti­ve mural with fish, are exemplary.

In the con­text of the histo­ry of pho­to­gra­phy, the shop win­dow pic­tures also recall, among other things, the famous pho­to­graphs of Parisian shop win­dows by Eugène Atget from the ear­ly 20^th cen­tu­ry. With his con­cep­tual­ly per­cei­ved typo­lo­gi­cal images, it was his inten­ti­on to pho­to­gra­phi­cal­ly cap­tu­re a vanis­hing, aes­the­ti­cal­ly uni­que momen­tum in the incre­asing­ly urba­nis­ed Paris of the future.

To cap­tu­re the pre­sent from an awa­re­ness of future chan­ges, to docu­ment time and its nar­ra­ti­ve traces in images, is a fac­tor typi­cal of pho­to­gra­phy. In the case of the Cloppenburg series, this can be dis­cer­ned in a varie­ty of con­cen­tra­ted pic­to­ri­al com­po­si­ti­ons; for Laurenz Berges, this is an essen­ti­al moti­ve for the crea­ti­on of the series. [1]

Following dif­fe­rent shoo­ting prin­ci­ples and trans­fer­ring the fac­tu­al and tem­po­ral varia­bles into images with indi­vi­du­al details, the unspec­ta­cu­lar motifs from Cloppenburg appear as a land­scape tableau rela­ting to one ano­ther, in which, with a pre­mo­ni­ti­on of the future, uni­ver­sal vali­di­ty and recur­ring events deve­lop a charm of their own.

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