ON SITE – Pictures from the Försterei

Photographic works celebrating fifty years of 1. FC Union Berlin

Jan Hollants, Holmsohn, Georg Krause, Matti Michalke, Claudia Prokop, Ludwig Rauch

Joy, rage, exultation – there are few places in today’s society where passion is tolerated in as pure a form as in the stadium. Feelings that connect people with one another and with the players in the standing area of the Alte Försterei: that’s photographer Jan Hollants. For Claudia Prokop, her summer fairy tale as a photographer began when construction started in June of 2008; over a period of 311 workdays, 2,333 volunteer stadium builders erected the three sides of the truss supporting the standing area. In tandem with this, Matti Michalke presents an installation made of 311 gloves worn by the stadium builders.
Holmsohn has been photographing both home and away matches since 2002; in addition, he makes portraits of fans together with their favourite devotional objects. ‘In any case,’ says Ludwig Rauch, ‘our love can’t be captured in words, and even photographs show no more than a brief moment.’ Rauch took very simple photographs as mementoes of a summer day in 2012: an amazing number of children came to paint their very own flags. And finally, over a two-year period of time, Georg Krause shot portraits of eight hundred soccer fans on the way to a home game for his photo book Eiserne Menschen (Iron People).