Steidlville

Since the 1960s, Michael Ruetz has photographed hundreds of cityscapes and landscapes in Germany and across Europe. His raison d’être has been to make time and transcience visible in pictures. In Berlin he traced the effects of time against the upheavals in political systems and German society. Buildings disappear and appear, great spaces are plowed up and the city silhouette is subjected to the same turnaround as the land. Marx-Engels-Platz is renamed Schlossplatz while Potsdamer Platz is transformed from no-man’s land into a high-rise district. Landscape and cityscape become timescape. Ruetz’ series of photographs are short films over a long period of time. In a very special way this book documents history in time-lapse photography. It bears witness to how architecture shapes and reshapes our habitats and how interpretation triumphs over our perception.