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Picture

New possibilities, new representations

13.09.2022
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Technical possibilities sometimes make things visible that humans would not be able to perceive without photography. In Eupen, in an alley called Fränzel, there are workers’ houses from the 18th century, but as a passer-by you cannot get an overall view of them as it is impossible to stand far enough away to get a view of all the house fronts.

Images construct and interpret reality. This image was created in 2015 for volume 3 of the book series Grenzerfahrungen. It shows the alley Fränzel in Eupen as no one has seen it before.

Together, the five workers’ houses in Fränzel have a façade that is about 30 metres long. Between these houses and the houses opposite is an alley only 3 metres wide …

This photograph would not have been possible with a conventional camera and an ordinary lens. For more than three hours, the photographer took countless pictures with a special lens. Each time, only a small section of the houses was photographed from the front.

With the help of a professional image processing programme, all the digital photos were linked together in a complex work process, so that this panoramic image was created, an image that cannot be perceived by passers-by in this way. Only if the houses opposite were demolished and we could take a distance of 20 metres could we actually get this view in real life.