Open book with blank left page and grayscale architectural photograph on right page.
Open book with blank left page and grayscale architectural photograph on right page.
Open book displaying two black and white photographs: a person drawing on the left and a bird's eye view of a river on the right.
Black and white photograph of an urban street with buildings and a parked car, mounted on a white page in an open book.
Open book spread with white text on black pages displaying a list of numbered references or footnotes.
Open book displaying black and white architectural photograph with geometric shapes and urban elements.
Open book with two black and white photographs on white pages, displayed against gray background.
Open book showing blank left page and right page with black and white photograph of urban vegetation.
Black and white photograph of a pedestrian overpath.
Open book displaying two black and white photographs: a close-up of hands on the left, vertical lines on the right.
Open book displaying two black and white photographs: abstract view of a concrete and metal ground and a solitary figure behind frosted glass on the right.
A Narrow Foothold title page on black background with gray text.

A Narrow Foothold

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.”