"I love ESSEN!" ... and by that I mean my hometown of Essen. For this reason, I wanted to connect my thesis at the University of Applied Sciences in Dortmund with this city.
Essen (Latin: Assindia) is a major city in the heart of the Ruhr area and the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region. After Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Dortmund, it is the fourth-largest city in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and one of its major urban centers. With approximately 570,000 inhabitants, this independent city in the Düsseldorf administrative district ranks ninth among Germany's major cities. Essen is a significant industrial center, home to well-known large companies, and, with its university (founded in 1972), also a university town. In 2003, the university merged with the neighboring University of Duisburg to form the University of Duisburg-Essen. In 1958, the city became the seat of the Diocese of Essen.
I began my initial research in the city of Kamen. I visited the local city archives and discovered historical documentary photography. Later, in my courses at the university of applied sciences, I tried to photograph the corresponding locations in the same way as the photographer before me, whose pictures I had seen in the city archives.
Recreating a picture from another era was like an adventure through my city. I wanted to know where the photographer had stood and what his perspective was. I was amazed and astonished by the results of my work, by how my hometown had changed in such a short time.