German philosopher Walter Benjamin’s monumental work the Arcades Project—which remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1940—represents both a treatise on the labyrinthine nature of the modern city and the realization of his dream of a book without authorship, composed almost entirely of quotations drawn from a wide range of sources. Taking their mutual appreciation for these aspects of Benjamin’s work as their starting point, friends and photographers Jonas Feige (Germany) and Alan Huck (United States) sorted through their archives of orphaned images in order to assemble a collective portrait of an anonymous city—one composed of severe geometric forms, vague symbols, and the spectral traces of a human presence. Intentionally trying to dissolve any sense of individual authorship, the two looked to Benjamin as their methodological guide, reminding them that “an enigma is a fragment that, together with another, matching fragment, makes up a whole.”
published by Another Earth in 2024