Within the last two years no place attracted me more around here in suburbia than Lothringen V, part of the former big coal mining factory Lothringen. The area of Lothringen V was given up in the late eighties. Since then it became an almost forgotten place, occupied and hidden by nature again during the years. Buildings turned to ruins, destroyed by wind and rain slowly but surely. A place with broken walls and windows, with rusty constructions telling stories about the time when I was young, and coal mining factories were all around. A paradise for graffiti artists too...

Within the last few months big excavators eliminated history preparing the area for a new industrial park. So – before that - I went there as long as possible to capture the secrets of this area, to find out the permanent changes, to discover something new.

Then I found out that a friend of mine, another photographer, was doing the same. It was funny and somehow exciting, to see the different results and point of views, when two people discovered and captured the same area independently. His documentary style on the one hand, while I was following my feelings and associations, more interested in details than the area as a whole.

In the end we decided to do an exhibition. The exhibition will start on sunday, 08.01.2012 and will last until 17.02.2012. It will take place at the Kulturrat Bochum, which is the perfect place for it, as the Kulturrat is located in renovated buildings in our suburbia, which belong to the former coalmining factory Lothringen too.

My contribution to the exhibition will be several series of similar images or ps-works. I will post an example of each serie in this gallery within the next days.

Here´s a link to the official invitation: http://www.kulturrat-bochum.de/index.php?id=191