Joachim Brohm: OHIO

In the 1980s Joachim Brohm spent his time photographing Germany’s industrial Ruhr region. In 1990, having received a working scholarship, he set off to Berlin to trace the processes of reunification. Between 1992 and 2002 Brohm undertook an urban photographic project in Munich, involving long term observation, photographing the premises of the Raab Karcher company, an abandoned industrial site on the outskirts of the city. In Ravensburg he spent over a year observing the periphery of the town from inside a car. All these ecological, economic, cultural and social upheavals in Germany – whether in the Ruhr, in Berlin or in Munich – have led to visible changes in the appearance of cities and landscapes, to new concepts of identity, new attitudes and modes of seeing. Brohm captures these changes and attunes our perceptions to social transformations. He asks us how we relate to reality; how we perceive and interpret it, while at the same time always keeping the medium of photography itself in his sights.