Andreas Paul

Madrid, Chicago, Dubai, Zurich: these are the cities where photographer Andreas Paul’s camera captures moments of pause. Paul’s positioning allows him to follow the pedestrians hurrying by at eye-level, sharing with us only details of street life in the multi-image compositions he creates. Through individual shots he attempts to better understand the anonymous masses; he witnesses their routines – riding bikes, pushing baby carriages, carrying shopping bags – and from these innumerable images creates a dazzling kaleidoscope of urban life.

The series shows combinations of condensed individual scenes from each city, characterized by its hard-working residences. Texture emerges through repetition, rows, and the combination of Paul’s individual snapshot-like photographs. From one person to the next down the entire row, a stylistic choreography forms. One row of people stroll by from left to right, the next from right to left. But the stationary and always identical point of reference allows the rows of passers-by moving in alternate directions to grow into a unified composition. Every location is energized and molded by their speed and dynamism.

Here, the photographer becomes a storyteller, relating stories through the moving images of everyday city life, the diversity of which fuses here into a visual network. Paul’s images are the products of an initially objective observer who challenges the viewer with his perspective of the urban wanderers. With virtuosity, he condenses these moments chronologically into tales of filmic quality.

Christina Wendenburg