This years exhibition by the Kulturfabrik (culture factory) Leipzig was titled “Karli – Lebensspuren einer Straße” and accordingly centred around the Karl-Liebknecht-Straße, Leipzig’s popular culture street going south from the centre through the Südvorstadt and Connewitz. Jörg Rom attended a photographic workshop guided by Leipzig based photographer Christiane Eisler and the association Frauenkultur Leipzig. During the workshop the photographies shown here were created and most of them were included in the exhibition which was shown in november 2013 in the Werk 2 in Leipzig.
Besides classic photographies and more experimental works visualizing the Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse, Jörg Rom also created a streetline montage panorama of the Karli. However not in our classic way by mainly visualizing the architecture of the street, but in a montage mixture of buildings and trams of the Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe (LVB – Leipzig transport services). The Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse is the major south connection within Leipzig’s city life and hence included into the public transport system via three separate tram lines. The panorama shows a mixture of trams by the LVB, old Tatra-trams as well as modern models, in classic LVB blue-yellow but also completely covered in ads. An older streetline montage of the Karl-Liebknecht-Straße made in 2011 was published to our archive earlier.
The next photographic duo shows the crossroads of the Karl-Liebknecht-Strasse / Kurt-Eisner-Strasse in two directions. The Kurt-Eisner-Strasse is one of the main streets crossing the Karli, leading from Reudnitz/Deutscher Platz via the Karli and the Südvorstadt towards the western areas of Schleußig, Plagwitz and Grünau. Locally famous is the small kiosk on the streetz island in eastern direction, visible in the first image.
The series shown in the title image was created as an opposite idea to horizontal panoramas by creating small vertical panoramas using 2-3 photographies atop each other. These slim architectural details of the Karl-Liebknecht-Straße show a focus on the street life combined with its architecture. Finally it became a horizontal panorama again, a montage of snap-shots and striking buildings along the Karli. A section of it showing more details is shown below.
Additionally a set of nighttime photographies of the night life in the popular street was made, including the naTo, the Löffelfamilie, the Café Puschkin as well as other places. A series of the naTo was also used for an animated GIF movie:
