| Title: | Asphalt, Steine, Scherben (Asphalt, Stones, Shards) |
| Artists: | Sophia Kesting, Dana Lorenz |
| Year: | 2024 |
| Format: | Publication; 296 pages, 24 × 30 cm, softcover, thread-sewn brochure with printed PVC envelope and inserted fan-fold, offset print |
| Text: | Christin Müller |
| Language: | English |
| Design: | Bureau Est (Ondine Pannet, David Voss) |
| ISBN: | 978-3-907112-93-9 |
| Price: | CHF 48.00 |
For the past twelve years Sophia Kesting and Dana Lorenz have been scrutinising, through the medium of photography, the square of Peaceful Revolution (Platz der friedlichen Revolution) in Leipzig and its process of transformation. Wilhelm-Leuschner-Platz is representative of the ongoing negotiation on how to handle the legacy of GDR architecture and the conflicts in urban planning between societal and economic interests. Only with the conclusion of their work, the controversial usage and development plans that have been under discussion years find closure.
Asphalt, Steine, Scherben (Asphalt, Stones, Shards), the title of their artistic project, linguistically orbits the materiality of this public square. An immense archive of 1,500 black-and-white medium-format photographs, it forms a unique collection of artistic documentary images of political dimension. Hard-lit night shots taken with a flash contrast with fragmentary daytime situations. Any contextualisation in time or space is dismantled by the alternation of real occurrences and staged re-enactments. The sequences of images follow no narrative structure, but enter as individual pictures into a visual dialogue. Their analog approach addresses the historical aspect of documentary work: Sophia Kesting and Dana Lorenz experienced the upheaval of 1989/90 as children—both the euphoria of the Peaceful Revolution and the fall of the Wall, as well as the sobering consequences. The two artists weave these shared photographic images with their distinct experiences in the publication through biographical text fragments.
The photo book as a printed medium plays a central role at the end of the project and negotiates the transformation process that had not occurred and was not visible by the time the work was completed. The stasis of the site becomes visible in the performative repetition of visual motifs, forming an essential basis for these photographs, which function as a space for thought.
Sophia Kesting (Leipzig) and Dana Lorenz (Berlin) have been working together on long-term photographic projects since 2012, in addition to individual projects. Both artists studied photography at the Academy of Fine Arts Leipzig and completed their studies as master students under Prof. Joachim Brohm in 2018.