Medebach

Petra Wittmar was born in the central German village of this book's title in 1955. This photographic inventory of her hometown from 1979 to 1983 analyzes its architecture and topography as a way of disclosing the structures of local life. Wittmar's interest was sparked by drastic changes in the 1970s, which saw parts of the village replaced with increasingly interchangeable, standardized architecture, and by extension perhaps standardized culture and lifestyle. As that new construction and new taste was taking hold, a contrasting yearning for "home" arose, which Medebach explores. Wittmar's renunciation of inflammatory moments and her largely formal stringency distinguish these images, which can also be read as a German reaction to the American New Topographics movement of the late 1970s.