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Cities: blinding Stars & camouflaged Scars

Written by Sabine Küper on . Posted in Urban Chant

  • Teheran_Panorama
  • pjoengjang-nordkorea-werbung-tourismus
  • Kinshasa, le qurtier des affaires.
  • Erbil

  • Mostar
  • An evening view of City Star Hall in Kabul, a $5 million complex where large wedding receptions are held for as many as 1,000 guests.

  • Teheran
  • Pjönjang
  • Kinshasa Boulvard of 30th of June
  • Erbil in Northern Iraq
  • Mostar after the war
  • An evening view of City Star Hall in Kabul, a $5 million complex where large wedding receptions are held for as many as 1,000 guests

The shiny surface of Cities got an icon of representing any spot of the globalized world in the superficial esthetics of advertisements and Public relations campaigns. Not only smiling dictators on TV or on banners in public spaces, also the skylines of their Capitals got a visual for the spreading of a glamorous appearance. Scars of war and natural catastrophies are camouflaged with a glossy surface of a prosperous commercial future in the light of construction booms and gentrefication.

It is possible to book a journey to North Korea, the most isolated country of the world. The visitor can move in this prison with special personnel being educated to work as PR agents for one of the last communist regimes. The collective conscious of the population is parallel misleaded completely by the Propaganda of the State.

The bonny pictures of Pjöngjang are in a significant way similar to the ones of other centers of political crisis. They are imitating a look competing in an absurd way with the shiny cities of the political enemy: the West. Representations of capitals from countries like Congo, Afghanistan and Iraq breath a certain Las-Vegas-Visualization.

In the contrary the spots from the dark sides of urban spaces are made invisible through their similar looks. Slums or refugee camps in Asia, Africa and Europe are hauntingly equalized visually. They are kept out of sight by a certain conformity of the outlook and management of hardship. The photographer’s eyes very rarely catch an individual moment even in the making of Portraits. The shine surface of the cities are the blinding starlight of camouflaged scars of suffering.

  • Slums Teheran
  • PovertyITeheran
  • Pjönjangsoviet
  • displacedPjönjang_ap
  • kin-slum1
  • GawilanCamp8
  • GawilanCamp5
  • rot_BOSNIA_GLOBAL_ROMA_CAMP_VISIT_2.29982447_large
  • 531519_9cfa6b10217ab89dbeb6fd89cee3f685_large
  • Slum in Teheran
  • More then half of the population of Teheran is living under the poverty line
  • Living Compounds in Pjönjang look like the dark side of the world in the science fiction movie "The Matrix". There is no day without electricity shortcuts
  • displaced people living at the outskirts of Pjöngjang
  • Slum in Kinshasa
  • Gawilan refugee camp close to Erbil
  • Family in the Gawilan refugee camp close to Erbil
  • Roma settlement close to Mostar
  • Kabul

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