What strikes me as an interesting premise in Florian Merdes’s book Steamcracker is the enforced myopic rendering of details and patterns, which turns the book and its intense sequences into something minutely chaotic. There is a world underneath the surface of things, a rhythm and a dedication to line that emanates in Florian’s book. Whereas it might be easy to dismiss these studies as simple, or the narrative as enforced by desire, over inherent intention, the details and the discussion concerning the process of Steamcracking, an obtuse scientific discussion regarding long-chain molecules, which are split into their parts from their aggregate, the concept and the imagery uphold the debate. The photographic details in the book mirror split molecules, detached from their environment —in this case, the facade and cityscape of Ludwigshafen am Rhein, Germany.
These details, as singular images, are well-executed and present a scanned reading of the local environment, featuring signage, off pieces of buildings, and metal, which are fairly glossy in their production. I think of some of the work as adjacent to Stephan Keppel’s excellent job. While Keppel is known for his process and grit, Merdes takes the opposite approach, using the language of digital, streamlined, and saturated imagery—usually employed in the annals of commercial photography—to highlight the effort of rendering. This gives the impression of a catalog in book form. On the gallery wall, I suspect it presents much differently, more Tillmans-like in its delineation of pop and line sensibility. I am also reminded of the work of Fryd Frydendahl, among other younger Danish artists who are currently emerging. I might also reference, a bit historically, the work of Keld Helmer-Petersen, notably through his opus 122 Color Photographs from 1948, wherein objects, line, and the Danish harbor towns present sumptuous color fragments of place, asking us to understand the terrain, through the microcosm of its surfaces and objects, each frame a seductive offering. In Merdes’s work, this is also the case, particularly evident in the sequencing of the book, where the motif of a short with lines optically challenges the viewer to understand the person and the place beneath the optical games.
Further discussions regarding architectural details align the work with several fantastic artists working in the field of present art. First, Joachim Brohm’s architectural and site-specific work, particularly his book Areal, is relevant to Merdes’s work. It addresses a town/site-specific project photographed over time, emphasizing architectural detailing while also considering broader aspects of labor and industrial history. Additionally, in terms of architectural detailing, one might mention the work of Andreas Gehrke, and Michael Lange. I think what works best in the book is that there is also a concentration surrounding advertising details, spirals, and jetties of shapes that repeat and ask us to understand the city through its branded lens and its written form. It is interesting to use this type of material as less of an indicator of communication and more as a fragment of capitalist reality. Overall, the book is well-thought-out, featuring innovative uses of repetition and materials that complement the maturity of the photograph, the glossy effect, and the acetate cover, which adds a plastic tactility that refers to the realities of the chemical company grounds and the reality of non-capital towns—highly recommended.
Fromt the Publisher
In Steamcracker, Florian Merdes deconstructs and reconstructs the image of the German industrial and chemical city of Ludwigshafen am Rhein, analogous to the chemical process of steam cracking, where long-chain molecules are split into their individual parts and can then be assembled into any new compound. In the numerous versions of the place sketched out in the book, from the close-ups and lyrical text inserts, the characteristic of this city emerges: its state of limbo, its not-yet-arrival in a defined identity, and its search for its own image. There is also something unrealised and latent in Ernst Bloch’s descriptions of his hometown, Ludwigshafen, as an expression of the station-like nature of our modern life, as not-at-home in the not-yet, as Wild West and Futurum. Based on these and other imaginary images, Steamcracker deals with the city as a projection space. Between legibility and unrecognisability, reality and pictoriality, photography and supposedly graphic image, things appear in a new light. A picture emerges that allows for possibilities and traces while exploring the open.