Saxony-Anhalt: Stephanie Kiwitt: “Why go when you can be at home?”

You originally come from Bonn and have lived in Brussels for more than ten years. Now you have a comprehensive volume with you Photos published, which were created during journeys through Saxony-Anhalt. How did you view the landscapes?

I moved to Halle in 2020 for my professorship at the Burg Giebichenstein Art University. I not only wanted to get to know Halle and its surroundings, but also Saxony-Anhalt. I was curious: where am I here? My gaze is a directed gaze of first getting to know each other, looking forward and to the left, then taking a step back and then forward again. A view that moves through space and across the state on successive journeys.

How was your first trip?

In December 2020, I was on a research trip with a friend and colleague for a university project on structural change and the coal phase-out. We drove from the Profen open-cast brown coal mine into the former Mansfeld copper slate mining area. It was a foggy day. At the time, I didn’t even realize that I was starting a job here. Out of the fog we came to Sandersleben. Suddenly the vastness of the landscape was gone and the road was narrow, the town seemed squat. A church spire jutted strangely into the air. This picture touched me deeply. At the same time I had the feeling that time had stopped here. My book begins with Profen and Sandersleben. What follows are pictures and sequences from numerous places that I visited up to the beginning of 2022. The book is laid out chronologically and you can look up all the locations depicted in the table of contents. I don’t follow any particular order on my tours. Sometimes I head for destinations I’ve heard or read about before; I discovered other places spontaneously along the way.

The shots of the streets and houses sometimes seem spontaneous.

I was often surprised by what I saw. It is important to me to show the peculiarities of individual streets and houses that radiate a certain pride. Some houses don’t seem to fit into the picture because of their unruliness. Some, with their tattered facades, amount to a wound.

In the form of ruins that are empty and left standing?

Sometimes they are real ruins, like the Zerbst Cathedral, which was destroyed in the war and stands as a monument within a prefabricated housing estate. Sometimes they are neglected, unused houses that are slowly falling into disrepair and are on the verge of demolition.

One gets the impression that it is a sad, melancholic country.

I have already mentioned my affection for all the places I have visited. This is also reflected in the warm basic tone of the photographs in the book. At the same time, it is important to me that the pride of the places or the humor of some situations are preserved in the pictures. But silence and emptiness predominate in the pictures as moments of farewell…

Farewell to what?

Perhaps from the remembered vibrancy and abundance of the industrial age. In numerous interviews that I conducted in 2023 for further work with residents of a town in the Mansfeld region, it was repeatedly heard, regardless of the age group, that everything used to be better. Of course, it is recognized that society has evolved and that that is a good thing. On the other hand, there is concern about change.

Why did you call your book “Flächenland”?

The term comes from administrative language. It separates the city states from the territorial states. However, I use this term as an image: Saxony-Anhalt is characterized by large areas and spatial distances and at the same time is heavily populated. Most of the population lives in rural areas, in small towns and villages. There are only three major cities: Magdeburg, Halle and Dessau.

The larger cities hardly appear. All you can see of Halle are photos of a cemetery with a group of figures from the 80s.

Halle was always the starting point for my trips. The view of my surroundings here soon became familiar to me. I, on the other hand, was interested in what was still unknown to me. So my pictures are, in a sense, travel photographs. However, I’m not interested in tourist representation, but rather in images of places and details that usually don’t receive attention. In their sheer quantity, there are almost 500 photographs, they make the book an invitation to the viewer to embark on a journey through the land themselves while looking through them.

Magdeburg only appears as heaven, full of migratory birds.

Exactly, the big cities are subordinate to the rural areas. In the Magdeburg sequence you can see a street sign in the lower edge of the picture that refers to the Breiten Weg, a very important street in Magdeburg. There was great damage here during the war. Another image in the sequence shows the model of the destroyed St. Nicholas Church. The many starlings in the sky created an impressive picture. Against the background of the widespread destruction of Magdeburg in the Second World War, they reminded me of war planes at the moment I took the photo. Later, when I looked at the pictures of the flock of birds, I also had to think about leaving and coming back.

For me, »Flächenland« was the first artistic work that paints such a detailed picture of today’s region. Were there any artistic or literary works that helped you explore the region?

I mostly read the local newspaper. Some articles or pictures, including reader photos, have actually inspired me to take one trip or another – reports about an archaeological excavation in Hackpfüffel, about the protest by traders in Köthen or the review of the novel “Zone C” by Sebastian Caspar , whose plot takes place within the crystal meth scene in Weißenfels. Only the protest in Köthen appears in the book.

What about older works?

In the first of his diaries, Einar Schleef, who spent his childhood and youth in Sangerhausen, writes about trips, for example to Leuna, to look at art in the cultural center. This was quite difficult for him because local public transport didn’t work so well. I then drove there myself.

Have you found the cultural center?

Yes, but it was closed. That may have had something to do with the pandemic. It is now a congress center and exhibitions probably also take place there. In my book there is a longer series of photos that were taken during this trip. It is winter, we see a closed arcade, then in one sequence a young couple walking along a wall of the Leunawerke.

You don’t show the cultural center, but it led you to this couple at the wall. These images seem particularly special to me for the book because people are very rarely seen in your pictures. Does this have to do with the pandemic, the time the photos were taken?

Apart from an image with the slogan “We are people who think differently,” the pandemic plays no role in the book. The streets and squares are quite empty even under normal circumstances. People usually work somewhere else during the day. Even if people only appear at the edges in my photos, they are present in every picture, in the houses, monuments and built landscapes. Their absence and the traces they left behind speak of change, of activities that no longer take place. Many of the small houses or shops in the old town centers are no longer used because the construction is completely outdated or the main street has become a thoroughfare for long-distance traffic.

Your pictures correspond to the situation because there is actually an overhang of buildings and space over people?

Yes, that is characteristic of Saxony-Anhalt, beyond the cities. It is mainly old people who live in the many small towns. Old people’s homes are currently being built for them, but it is only a matter of time before even these will be empty again.

When you leaf through the book, you get the impression that very little has been built in recent years. You can occasionally see medieval churches and half-timbered houses, but above all you can see houses that were built during the Wilhelminian era or in the GDR. You can see neoclassical gables and reinforced concrete. Only a few buildings seem to date from the post-reunification period.

That’s correct. New residential buildings are being built on the outskirts of towns. I was interested in the town centers. Although these are a few hundred years old, they are still significantly influenced by the industrial boom period, between around 1870 and 1970. The changes in society can be seen particularly in them. The small town centers consist of remnants from the height of industrialization. Today you can see bricked-up shops whose vacancies are not only due to a decline in population, but also to changes in shopping behavior. People travel differently – thanks to cars, they are mobile and drive out to the big shopping centers, and recently they shop online.

Are young people present in the streets?

Yes. The aforementioned couple walking along a wall; and the last double page in the book shows children on their way home from school. But people usually only appear indirectly in the pictures.

Is something like youth culture visible in public spaces?

Together with students, we held a workshop in the Mansfelder Land in spring 2023, in which we had intensive discussions with young people. It became clear: There are far too few places for young people in rural areas. People meet in playgrounds, at stops or train stations. In some cities there are also youth clubs. In the book I show bus stops with graffiti.

Are these political statements?

Only partially. In Zeitz, next to a teddy bear painted on the wall, it says “Meth is good.” In Hettstedt someone wrote “Stop genocide!” on a wall. This is of course political, but it could also have been written by adults.

What other political statements have you encountered in public spaces?

I didn’t photograph everything I saw. In Calbe, a poster for a returnees’ fair was important to me: “Why go when you can be at home?” A direct reference to the population decline in the country. In Köthen I documented the retail protest against the Corona measures: a row of shops in which the owners covered their shop windows with newspapers. They drew attention to the already high vacancy rate in Köthen, out of concern that the last shops would also have to close. I found a scene from Polleben particularly irritating: Directly behind a Thälmann monument there was a Reich citizen plaque on a gate. As a result of the break at the beginning of the 1990s and more recent structural changes, political signs from different times overlap here, as in other places.

Stephanie Kiwitt: Area land (2020–2022). With a text booklet by Jonathan Everts and Daniel Herrmann. Spector Books, 464 pages, hardcover, €48.