In his project “Areal”, Joachim Brohm creates a work over a ten-year period that addresses urban structural change, an urban transformation of 1950s industrial sites into a new service and residential centre, using Munich as an example. The exemplary character of the processes of change is in the foreground here and questions the status of urban identity at the turn of the millennium in general: “Is the modern city like the modern airport – the same everywhere?” (Rem Koolhaas)
With his photography, Brohm creates a homogenous photographic archive that currently makes visible in particular the temporary, architectural-spatial provisional arrangements and interim uses of a typically metropolitan “city periphery economy” of the 1990s. From 1999 onwards, the project work will focus on the complete redevelopment and design of the area, taking up architectural and urban planning aspects in detail and in a processual manner.
The photographer’s independent image-making and focus on immanent aspects of the medium of photography is an integral part of his artistic practice. – The foundations of this project are documented in the free works that Brohm has realised over the past 15 years, which repeatedly deal with the concepts of industry, time and history. “Areal” is Brohm’s most extensive photographic project to date.