The Ahr Valley was hit by an unprecedented flood on the night of July 15, 2021. 134 people died. No house near the Ahr remained unscathed. Not a stone on the other.

The bizarre sculptures of floating refuse left behind by the river offered the only orientation amid the chaos of the flood. Like cautionary witnesses, the figures made of torn branches, torn out bushes, trees and civilized floating refuse stood in the battered landscape.

During the clean-up work, further abstruse structures resembling installations emerged from the collected trash and junk. As it were, as if the catastrophe wanted to pave the way for a new beginning with its creative creations from the doomed world.

The photographic staging turns the remains of the flood into silent witnesses of troubled times, in which nature and civilization collide and become harbingers of the climate change that is also spreading in Germany. Created from the synthesis of unleashed natural force and human belongings, the remains display a cruelly beautiful aesthetic in a dystopian-looking landscape.

Eckart Bartnik. Born in Bonn in 1957, the photographer and natural scientist lives in Wiesbaden and works in basic research. Since the 1980s, his work has been shown internationally in group and solo exhibitions and published in daily newspapers and online.

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