Fatih Kurçeren | Pithead (2006 - ongoing)
Fatih Kurçeren | Pithead (2006 - ongoing)
My image series "Pithead" attempts to perceive the Ruhr region as a place where identities and firmly established social structures are dissolving. For more than 150 years, the region between the Ruhr and Lippe rivers has been shaped by immigration and the encounter of diverse cultures. Even after the heavy industry lost its importance and the region lost its attraction for migrant workers, its multicultural character has remained. I - an immigrant myself - take an unbiased look at the region and its inhabitants. To do so, I move along the blurred edges of a society whose center seems as unclear as the questions about its norms, about its inside and outside, and about what is foreign and what is its own. It is the people themselves who are placed in the center, and who are seen in casual stagings and observations as the ones who recreate their selves and their surroundings from moment to moment. The much-cited structural change does not seem to come true for these people. There is a past marked by work and industry. But instead of new jobs and perspectives, a diffuse uncertainty about the future of the region has set in. Yet the people are not to be shown as mere victims of social grievances, but as actors in their own life plans.
Format:
Photo / Video
