Ulrich Wüst - Yearbook – Signs and Travels

In this book, Berlin photographer Ulrich Wüst (born 1949) brings together images from the past 30 years. He took them in various locations: in Berlin, in German cities, and while traveling, mostly in Europe. Ulrich Wüst is not a travel photographer; none of the photographs were commissioned; reportage is not his specialty. Rather, these images are the visual diary of a photographer who, since his beginnings, has explored the spaces people have created for self-expression and expression. And it doesn't follow a strict chronology, although it was created continuously over the years.

Ulrich Wüst, whose analytical, rigorous city photography has become widely known, reveals a different, almost lyrical and associative side of his work in this diary. Subtle compositions of seemingly insignificant details, seemingly random observations on the peripheries and in the gray areas of cities and open countryside are the material with which the photographer develops an often melancholic poetics of the visual arts. Even if some of the images seem to be taken from the inventory of dreams, they depict a fragile reality beyond certainties and often with clear signs of decay.

Just as a written diary knows no other criterion than the author's subjective truth at the moment of writing, these images are also an intimate way for the photographer to communicate with himself, his medium, and the form of the surrounding space. Ulrich Wüst photographs exclusively in black and white, avoiding sharp contrasts, capturing atmospheric elements in richly differentiated grayscale and situational elements with a considered serenity of vision. He studied architecture and worked as a city planner before devoting himself entirely to photography, thus being familiar with the symbolic and practical significance of urban and rural situations and their individual details.

The visual narratives of these places are historical on the one hand, but even more so, they are very contemporary. The signs of culture, economy, and, not least, politics that Ulrich Wüst sees and depicts in them form an aesthetically striking yet disturbing subtext to the current state of the world.