Nostalgia is misplaced. She doesn’t fit Michael Ruetz either. He carried out his project of making time visible through the means of photography over half a century so persistently and almost stubbornly that one can only admire his exhibition at the Academy of Arts.
She’s also great. “Poetry of Time: Timescapes 1966-2023” makes it easy and difficult at the same time. For a photographer, the best way to illustrate how time passes is a specific place that changes over the years: city history as contemporary history. But in order to document this change, you have to visit that place again and again, like Ruetz, and take the same perspective: Reichstag, Potsdamer Platz, Palace of the Republic. Berlin made things quite difficult for him from 1989 onwards.
New construction pits, high-rise buildings or security zones around the ministries. Suddenly the point where the Berlin photographer stood last year and which he marked in red on his map disappears. Some of the long-term observations end at this point. But Ruetz, who was born in Berlin in 1940, pursues the entire project with determined passion. In “Facing Time”, a documentary about the photographer that was screened at various festivals and is now shown in the exhibition, you can see him at work. Always there: his project colleague, the artist Astrid Köppe.
They stand there and count the distances
In the middle of winter they stand on the Spree to count the struts on the metal grid. Which ones did the photographer note, were they vertical or horizontal? Köppe is uncertain about the location. But Ruetz is already positioning himself and setting up his equipment, which is now under glass in the exhibition.
Michael Ruetz, a member of the Academy of Arts since the late 1990s, handed everything over to the archive – the “Timescapes”, his cameras, all the documentary material, including a self-built model of Berlin-Mitte with a wall. His project is finished; curator Franziska Schmidt is showing 23 examples from 360 locations in the exhibition.
Mainly from Berlin and the surrounding area and always as panoramic, large-format prints that condense the sometimes profound changes over decades into three to six image examples. In fact, like “No. 162” seventeen shots of the Brandenburg Gate. But there is also a long-form film in which Ruetz observes the violence of nature on an atmospheric landscape in southern Germany.
The green disappears under the asphalt
In the show, “Timescape 423” symbolizes a similar standstill in the middle of the urban world. Three to six picture examples “Albrechts Teerofen, Berlin Steglitz-Zehlendorf” shows a snowy landscape from 1991, a bumpy road in the same place (1996) and a green overgrown area in July 2007. What has become of the central tree in the first two pictures remains a mystery. Otherwise, nature continues to grow. An exception.
© Michael Ruetz
At the other locations such as Reichpietschufer, Alexanderufer, Schlossplatz or Tacheles, the green of the 1990s becomes increasingly gray until everything is finally built over and asphalted. Franziska Schmidt calls it a “time shock”. Sometimes one wishes that city developers had used Ruetz’s photographs from the 1990s as an opportunity to reshape Berlin more sensitively. But that is not his topic.
“Time doesn’t take change into account,” states the photographer. His view is documentary, the camera incorruptible. One looks in vain for the empathy in his portraits, even if Ruetz can certainly get angry about the destructive power of investors. He is known for his pictures of Joseph Beuys, some of which he took at the Düsseldorf Academy and others at the artist’s home. There are also numerous published books, such as “In Goethe’s Footsteps”, about the “APO Berlin” or “The Family Of Dog”.
Where is the Berlin biotope?
“Timescapes” is not the first project to make fleeting time visible through concrete brands. But it is a major project that extends to Rotterdam or the Brenner Valley, to Leipzig and Dresden. It is unique because the transformation of almost all documented places erases all previous conditions and, especially in Berlin, is still progressing. And you are overwhelmed by what you see in the exhibition, which is as precise as it is aesthetically convincing.
The “Timescapes”, a made-up word, become a journey through time that tells a lot about the capital. Without Michael Ruetz having to raise his voice. His images are enough to make you think about urban spaces and their representative or sociological functions. And about the Berlin biotope, which has become a paradise for investors. All of this happens without nostalgia, but still with a sinking feeling.