January 21: Robert Morat Gallery, Linienstraße 107, 10115 Berlin opens In Between by Henrik Spohler from today until 11 March 2017.
Spohler’s new photographic project In Between is part four in his series on modern traffic of data and goods.
“…it is about the almost absurd omnipresence of goods – as a sign of globalization” he says. “If you order a pair of slippers online today, you will find them on your doorstep tomorrow, no matter whether they were made in Taiwan or South Tyrol.”
World-wide logistics and ‘just-in-time’ supply have become the backbone of business to make goods, raw material and industrial products available almost everywhere and at any time.
Spohler’s project investigates places of transit; ports and freight airports, facilities that connect the trade routes, serving nothing else but economic needs.
These ‘nowhere’ and ‘everywhere’, devoid of visual reference to place, continent or country. These nameless locations are at the rear end of industrial production and economic activity.
They seem almost fictional. Here, half a mountain appears to have been surgically removed in order to transplant this array of cells, shipping containers. These empty boxes are temporary depositories which are shunted back and forth across the seas, sometimes in through the air, to circulate the vital substances of capital.
Henrik Spohler was born in 1965 and studied at Folkwang School in Essen, has been working as a freelance photographer in Hamburg since 1993 and teaches as a professor at the Berlin School of Technology and Economics.
“In Between” has been published as a photobook by Hartmann project.
[NOTE: Today’s post is a short placeholder due to temporary lack of bandwidth preventing internet research and document retrieval. More to come when the issue is resolved]
