Arabellastraße 5 (2022)
Nature One (seit 2013)
Das sagt sich so einfach nicht (2023)
Auf diese Fotografin hat die Welt gewartet(2023)
Arabellastraße 5 (2022)
Nature One (seit 2013)
Das sagt sich so einfach nicht (2023)
Auf diese Fotografin hat die Welt gewartet(2023)
In my long-term project "Nature One", I explore the culture of electronic dance music. The foundation of my work is Nature One, Europe’s largest festival for electronic dance music, held annually since 1996 at the former Pydna missile base in the Hunsrück region of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany.
The military complex, built under the codename Pydna, is a former NATO missile station and a relic of the Cold War era. When the last missiles were withdrawn from Pydna and the Cold War came to an end around 1989/90, techno was born. Although the site has been repurposed for military use again since 2005, its civilian function is limited to hosting the festival.
A camouflage-print tent, sweating bodies, and nitrous oxide capsules inevitably blend with the site’s history and military architecture. I do not attempt to resolve these ambivalences, but instead, I aim to make them visible through the chosen subjects and composition of the images: intoxication and reality, peace and destruction, strength and fragility, solitude and community, nature and plastic, impermanence and the feeling of being immortal in the moment. For many, the festival is an escape from everyday life and its pressures—a temporary sanctuary where techno, dancing, and celebration offer a counter-narrative, a liminal space that briefly suspends the outside world.
In addition to people and the environment, the photo series also features objects I discovered on the festival grounds afterward. I am particularly intrigued by the stories these abandoned items tell, not only about the techno scene but about human nature in general.
