KRAFTWERK JUGEND / powerplant youth

These images are samples of my book „Kraftwerk Jugend“ (powerplant youth).

These images are samples of my book „Kraftwerk Jugend“ (powerplant youth). It is my final work at Ostkreuz

School for Photography (Berlin), supervised by Prof. Ute Mahler.

One and a half years I have accompanied teenagers who are born after 1989 in Lübbenau, a small town in the southeast of Brandenburg, Germany. Thanks to it's powerplant "VEB BKW JUGEND" Lübbenau used to be an important industrial facility of the former DDR. Closed after the big change in 1990 it finally collapsed by a controlled demolition in May 2010 - the very day I began my work in Lübbenau.

Since over 20 years the formerly so called „Energy-City“ Lübbenau is trapped in the circle of economical

recession, unemployment and population decline that can be called typical for eastern german towns. A

development that is deeply connected to urban shrinking and „controlled partial demolition“.

However I am not just interested in the pure documentation of this decline. Much more I deal with another

question: what does it mean for these youngstersto grow up in a surrounding that is continuously shrinking and

ageing?

That means I focus less on the „causes“ than some of the consequences of such a decline. My work

dedicates itself to the young people whose personal development is contrarily to the one of their environment.

In my pictures the young protagonists are acting in front of a ruined stage. It is a product of an ongoing

process of history. But the presence of the adolescents changes the way it appears. In all it's tragic lack of future

some sanguinity comes to the fore. A quotation from Schiller's "Wilhelm Tell" became very dear to me while

working with the kids: "Das Alte stürzt und neues Leben blüht aus den Ruinen."

The kaleidoscope of my images tries to describe the wondrous state of uncertainty, which lies in between

youth and adolescence. Eventually it is an universal emotion of stagnation and departure.