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Rebecca Schwarzmeier

Autobahninsel

Seen from the highway, Germany is actually a fairly homogeneous country.” – Wolfgang Herrndorf

Rebecca Schwarzmeier’s (b. 1991; lives and works in Nuremberg) photographs examine the cultural and political implications of modern infrastructures. In her most recent project, she turns her attention to the German autobahn and its peculiar nowhere spaces. Noisy, smelling of exhaust fumes, the picnic tables deserted, rest stops are places where, it seems, no one likes to spend more time than absolutely necessary. But they are where many people work and truck drivers spend much of their leisure and sleeping time. Schwarzmeier takes time to look around and zooms in on the sometimes touching, sometimes unintentionally funny ways in which operators try to mitigate the standardized architecture of these facilities, to camouflage their being mere in-between places with decorations, to lend them a more personal and homier cast and create a semblance of durability amid the constant flow of people. Despite the monotony and the capitalist interests stamped on the façades, Schwarzmeier reveals, these are not anonymous places, not so-called non-places— they do not lack identity, relation, and history, quite on the contrary. 

Autobahninsel is a nuanced contribution to the debate over the transformation of public spaces and their social significance. Interweaving photography with writings by Anna Hofmann, Christoph Schaden, Chiara Seidl, and Florian Werner, the book charts an interdisciplinary approach and places the works in contexts of art history as well as urban sociology and cultural studies.