The City – Becoming and Decaying

One day the city of Ordos will be home to four million people.

Construction workers have mapped out its libraries, factories, shopping malls and universities with lines drawn into the promising earth as the Chinese city of Beijing bustles 800km away.

Ordos is a city becoming.

It joins Las Vegas, Pripyat, Detroit, Ushuaia, Dubai, Lagos, Moscow, London, Istanbul, Berlin, Tokyo and Auroville in a selection of ‘The City – Becoming and Decaying.’ A travelling exhibition by Ostkreuz, an acclaimed German photography agency, which let loose 18 photographers in 22 countries over a period of two years to document cities around the globe.

Hosted by the Goethe-Institut in collaboration with the Namibian University of Science and Technology, the National Art Gallery of Namibia and the College of the Arts in Katutura, ‘The City’ examines the complexity and contradictions of city life through each of its photographers’ unique perspectives.

Intrigued by the idea that according to a United Nations population report that states, as of the year 2008, there are more people in the world living in cities than in the countryside, the agency set out to gather images from around the world of the city’s growth and decay.

“Today the city shapes the face of the planet, dotting each of its continents. The African city is growing most rapidly, the Asian city holds the most people, and in Europe the city extends furthest into the countryside. Meanwhile, there are 30 cities on earth with over 10 million inhabitants – cities that have earned the title of megacities,” says ‘The City’ curator Marcus Jauer.

“The future of the world lies in the city. It is where the fate of humanity will be decided. What happens to the city also happens to us. In the city people who would avoid each other in the country or never even meet confront one another. The city attracts a great concentration of poverty, while at the same time it is often the only way to escape impoverishment.

The city shows the power of planning and also how planning can become utterly meaningless. It gives everyone the feeling that they belong to something, but then shows them that the parts have nothing to do with one another. It provides closeness and creates anonymity. The city is everything and its opposite, all at once, in the same place.”

With photographer Maurice Weiss alighting in Ordos to see it beginning while Andrej Krementschouk presents the Ukrainian city of Pripyat which once housed the men and women working at the nearby Chernobyl plant as eerily abandoned and decaying, ‘The City’ creates a composite global metropolis. One whose inhabitants are of all races and at various stages of urban development.

Perhaps most hopeful is the Indian city of Auroville photographed by Anne Schönharting.

Billed as “a universal town where men and women of all countries are able to live in peace and progressive harmony above all creeds, all politics and all nationalities”, the purpose of Auroville is to achieve human unity. An ideal evident in its populace which includes a Swiss judge, a French architect and the various international inhabitants and visitors making their way past the futuristic Matrimandir, a place of meditation.

With Pepa Hristova zooming in on individuals in Tokyo, Frans Schinski documenting people in transit in London and Istanbul, Darwin Meckel intrigued by musicians and melancholy in Detroit and photographers Julian Röder and Thomas Meyer capturing Lagos above and Dubai as opulent as it is pristine, ‘The City’ is a reflection on what we have built, what we have left to rot and how most of us have chosen to live.

“What we ultimately have before us is a portrait of a city that brings together all cities, a city that stretches back before memory and extends beyond our imagination,” says Jauer.

“People enable cities to grow and decline. They come and flee, build and destroy, press toward the centre and remain on the outskirts, seek community, and stand alone – people who want to fulfill their aspirations.

They have created a place for this: It is called the city.”

– martha@namibian.com.na, Martha Mukaiwa on Twitter and Instagram

Jordis A. Schlösser – City Behind Walls, Berlin

Pepa Hristová – Electronic Town, Tokyo

Anne Schönharting –

Auroville, India

Frank Schinski –

Transit Stills, Moscow, London, Istanbul

A. Krementschouk – Pripyat, Ukraine

Dawin Meckel – Down Town, Detroit

J. Brüggemann – Mas Austral Ushuaia, Argentina