(2016)

The recently opened „Light Rail“ system in Addis Abeba / Ethiopia leads the visitor through different socioeconomic parts of the city out to the suburbs with Chinese built housing projects. By walking the lines and using a hand held translucent mirror I projected different realities onto each other, picturing people and their surroundings at the same time. Inspired by Michel de Certeaus understanding of walking in the city I created images that are dubious, ambiguous. Everything in the pictures is happening at the same time, at the same place, every image is a visual condensation of the city. Walking, as Michel de Certeau once wrote, has its own rhetoric. „It is the result of chance encounters that shape its direction and transform it into an allegory of others. It becomes a messenger of misdirections, crossroads and seduction.“

With „Light Rail“ I wanted to transport the feeling of an African City onto paper creating a photographic essence of a place. I was exploring the boundaries of the documentary photographic image. By printing it in specific ways, the images become impressionistic pieces that hide visual secrets in plain sight. It leaves the decision of the viewer to find them, as the walkways leave the decision to the flaneur to walk them.