Temple Road

© Josefine Rauch - Anais and Jannai on Temple Road © Josefine Rauch - untitled from the series Temple Road © Josefine Rauch - Sascha "the mayor" on Temple Road View all images ↓
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Temple Road explores how an industrial area on Frankfurt’s edge transforms every Sunday. Faith communities gather amid warehouses, temporarily shifting the space’s purpose—quietly contrasting weekday industry with weekend spirituality.

On the outskirts of Frankfurt, within an ordinary industrial district, a quiet threshold opens once a week. For a brief span of time, a hidden world emerges between repair shops, office buildings, and a large meat-processing factory. What remains unnoticed during working days becomes a place of gathering on Sundays, when people from many backgrounds arrive and the area begins to shift in rhythm and meaning.

Along a single block, Hindu temples, mosques, and independent Christian congregations gather side by side, each carrying its own language of belief. While the district is defined by labor and logistics during the week, the weekend introduces another presence—one shaped by prayer, music, celebration, and quiet assembly.

From the outside, these places remain almost indistinguishable from their surroundings. The buildings appear austere, functional, and closed, blending into the utilitarian character of the area. Inside, however, communities carefully construct their own spiritual environments. Through fabrics, altars, colors, and improvised structures, interiors take shape within the neutral shells of warehouses.

Largely invisible to the wider city, these congregations have moved toward the outskirts as rising rents reshape where faith can be practiced. In this unlikely setting, diverse presences coexist across religions, languages, and nationalities.

Rather than depicting the services themselves, the photographs attend to the subtle moments in which the place gathers and releases its temporary intensity. They follow the traces that remain in rooms, objects, and improvised interiors—quiet witnesses to recurring encounters. Through these fragments, the work traces how, for a limited time each week, an overlooked industrial landscape is inhabited, shared, and gently transformed.

Temple Road
awards, features & exhibitions:

shortlist:

  • Lens Culture Portrait Award 2025

  • Lens Culture New Visions Award 2025

  • Trieste Photo Days 2025 (selected by Harry Gruyaert)

  • Athens Photo Festival 2024, 2026

  • Urbanautica Institute Awards 2023, 2025

solo show:

  • Temple Road at ON FILM LAB, Frankfurt (February 2026)

group shows:

  • Sarajevo Photo Festival, Sarajevo (June 2026)

  • IPFA Awards traveling group show, Barcelona (March 2026)

  • Ideations at zik, Berlin (September 2025)

  • Electricity at NONOT Studio, Frankfurt (July 2025)

  • what happens in the meantime. by Fotobus Society, Leibnizufer, Hanover (May, June 2025)

  • Under the Rug by Analogue Now at Fotogalerie Friedrichshain, Berlin (May, June 2025)

  • borders and boundaries at AFF Galerie, Berlin (May 2025)

  • PASSIONATELY at Fotografie Forum, Frankfurt (September 2024)

  • KANTE at Bethanien Berlin and Kunsthalle Ost Leipzig (March 2024)

online & print features: