In only two weeks' time the opening of our exhibition at C/O Berlin will take place and the exhibition catalogue, which will be published in May by Hatje Cantz, has been completed. We would like to thank Naroska Design (layout), Christiane Rothe of DruckConcept (pre-press) and Dr. Cantz'sche Druckerei (printing).
Joerg Brueggemann: Dear Annette, for your project "Atlantis", which is part of our anniversary exhibition "The City - Becoming and Decaying", you went to places called Atlantis. One, for example, was a youth hostel in Krakow, another was a club for transsexuals in New York. What were you looking for when you set out to photograph "Atlantis" and what did you find in these places?
© Annette Hauschild/OSTKREUZ
Annette Hauschild: Instead of looking at a real place or a real city, it excited me to look for an idea of the ideal city. Our titel "The City - Becoming and Decaying" already has something exaggerated, something too large, with the apparent claim of wanting to explain a whole cycle. I thought it important that the perspectives would be very differential. I wanted to show very small and human, as well as quite abstract aspects. Then I more or less stumbled upon Atlantis by chance.
I thought that all these places, which call themselves Atlantis, must have delt with this legend somehow and that I would find something to photograph in each of these places, which would later form a picture of the city of dreams or the longing for it as a whole. Well, and our subtitel "Becoming and Decaying", of course, fits quite well with the idea of Atlantis. Only something that does not exist anymore or has never existed can bear so much interpretation and wishful thinking.
Atlantis is a universal and very popular myth. It is unbelievable how inflated this name is being used, once you start looking for it. I have searched for places, which do not show an all too perfect image of Atlantis, like for example all those water parks. Instead I specifically looked for places that already have something broken about them, places that are not all too perfekt. For one, so that I could find my own images and secondly, so that both sides - rise and fall of Atlantis - can still play a role in them.
JB: In many of your images, the exact place where they were taken cannot be recognized, but a superior feeling for the place of "Atlantis" overcomes one - as if these places are held together with an invisible string. Did you photograph with this in mind, planning how the images of such different places would fit together, or did that unfold itself later during the editing?
© Annette Hauschild/OSTKREUZ
AH: Selecting the images to fit together was much harder than I thought. I wanted to make a mix of topographic images and portraits. I did, of course, try to create or find images that reflected a certain mood and images that would say something about paradise, dream, downfall, etc. But putting them together was not easy, because the places were so different from each other. In the end the places where the pictures were taken became quite apparent afterall and thus I left out many location shots, which were more topographic.
It was also hard to choose whether to make one place out of the many or rather show the antagonisms and differences of many . There would be more space for larger variety in a larger story, but in a summary one has to be more precise, which is not one of my strengths. I tried a lot with the order of the images and am now able to fit in most of my favourite pictures.
If you say it seems like it was all in one place, I am quite happy, since that is what I was trying to achieve. Especially due to the first image, where, like with the classic reportage, the place is shown and then one is able to dive into it...
JB: I probably first heard of the myth of Atlantis in the 80s. Back then, there was a rather embarassing american TV series called "Man from Atlantis" with Patrick Duffy as the last survivor of the sunken island. Next to a lot of other bizarre phenomena, there are aliens and portals to other dimensions. Entering this world, one is sent across the whole planet in a short time. Do you think that the utopia of "Atlantis" has come a little closer in the globalised world?
© Annette Hauschild/OSTKREUZ
AH: I think in the long run we do not need these collective desires, like Atlantis, anymore. Everyone moves in their own, sometimes globalised, community or in their own digital fantasy world. No myth has the chance to establish itself over centuries anymore, which does not bother me and I am not critizising that either. The real issue of Atlantis is the search for happiness and the ideal form of life and that this condition always bears its finiteness in itself. That is something, which always moves people. I only used Atlantis, because it describes this state so beautifully allegorical.
