German photographer tells tale of three cities
BENGALURU: Climate and social circumstances define living situations and lead to a very diverse interplay between private and public lives. With this idea, German photographer André Lützen started a photo series called Living climate: A tale of three cities. He focused on three cities with different weather conditions: Kochi in south India, Arkhangelsk in north-west Russia and Khartoum in Sudan.
“In Kochi, I worked with the life and living conditions during the monsoon. Images of contemporary living and housing conditions are combined with portraits of Kochi residents. I went to Arkhangelsk during the cold season. This city in northwest Russia has freezing temperatures for eight months a year, sometimes as low as - 40 degrees. The climate makes for an extreme contrast between indoor and outdoor life. Inside pre-fab buildings or wooden houses, residents have created cave-like havens of intimacy and comfort where they spend most of the year, while the world on the outside seems strangely neglected,” he says, adding that Khartoum, the capital of Sudan, which is located where the Blue Nile and White Nile Rivers converge, is a huge city comprising three distinct places. The sub-Saharian desert climate produces a dry heat of 46 degrees, he says.
He says that what fascinated him the most is not the effect of climate change, but how the people cope with the weather. In the series, Andre approaches the question of how climate influences people and their ways of living. “I think a look at the pictures from Kochi, Khartoum and Arkhangelsk tell it all. The weather determines how we move about and also how we furnish and decorate our homes. Many of my pictures show people in their homes. The differences are envisaging,” he says.
The idea for the series was conceived when he was working on a project in Vietnam called ‘Public Private Hanoi’. “I photographed the old residential quarters of Hanoi. There, ground-floor apartments are open to the street and serve as both living rooms and workshops. Sidewalks are taken over by the residents. Cramped quarters force people out of their houses and onto the streets. The heat in the frequently confining, often windowless rooms let the people open up their living spaces onto the public pavements. These conditions lead to an interplay between private and public lives,” he says.
The 90-photograph series will be exhibited at Goethe-Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan Bangalore from June 2 to 10. Entry is free.
About the artist
Born in 1963 in Hamburg, André Lützen studied visual communication at the Hochschule für bildende Künste, Hamburg, and at the International Centre of Photography, New York. He has showcased his work in numerous exhibitions such as the Haus der Photographie / Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, the Krefelder Kunstmuseen, the Hamburger Kunsthalle, the Noorderlicht Photogallery, Groningen, at the New York Photo Festival and at Photo Espana.