Hans-Christian Schink: (E/ G) - Tapa dura

The Leipzig-based photographer Hans-Christian Schink (*1961 in Erfurt) first gained notice for his series Verkehrsprojekte Deutsche Einheit, for which he spent seven years documenting new traffic-related constructions in eastern Germany. The images bear testimony to humankind’s enormous intervention in the environment. This clash between civilization and nature is a recurrent theme in almost all of Schink’s work: be it telephone cables that appear in an apparently virgin Vietnamese jungle, or utility poles and wires strung across Niigata’s snowy landscape. Even if human beings, as the perpetrators of these interventions, are never directly seen in these photographs, the scars they have left behind make them ever-present. Yet Schink does not pass judgment: he simply documents the scenes from the perspective of a remote observer.