THOSE TWENTIES - JENE ZWANZIGER JAHRE - Photographs of Architecture in the Rhineland and in Westphalia

JENE ZWANZIGER JAHRE - THOSE TWENTIES

The two Essen-based photographers Petra Wittmar and Ulrich Deimel have been considered top-league German architecture photographers at least since their participation in the Venice Architecture Biennale in 1996. Their latest task has been a documentary photographic presentation of the quite remarkable architecture from the period between the wars in North-Rhine Westphalia. Important master builders such as Dominikus Böhm, Fritz Schupp, Peter Behrens and Bruno Paul created formidable structures in the Rhine-Ruhr area. The mine building Zollverein by Schupp/Kremer at Essen can hardly be matched for its functionalist austerity and aesthetic homogeneity, and the elegance of the Disch house by Bruno Paul in Cologne has set standards. However, the photographers also discovered and payed tribute to quite a number of "unknown" masterpieces, presenting an assembly of fascinating portraits of architecture from this era, with characteristic and often surprising details.

Edited by Ulrich Deimel, Petra Wittmar, texts by Wolfgang Pehnt, Hubertus von Amelunxen, commentaries on the photographs by Ulrich Bücholdt