Krefeld, Rheinstraße zwischen Ostwall und Lohstraße, 1990 (print 2018)

About the Work

In 1990, Volker Döhne photographed a street in Krefeld in frontal view for his series Rheinstraße. Tenements, shops, and bars are strung together, ostensibly without any compositional intention. Ed Ruscha had already worked in a similar way for his iconic early work of conceptual art Every Building on the Sunstet Strip in 1966, which depicts the clubs, restaurants, and boutiques on the eponymous boulevard in Los Angeles in a series of glued-together photos. A common feature is their only seemingly documentary depiction of an everyday street front, shimmering between frames and series, still image and film.