It Is the Water Flowing that Makes the Sound

The protagonist of this work is the river Rhine. The photographs show structures that extract the Rhine's bank filtrate, transport it under the city, clean it, and release it back into the river. In Cologne, drinking water is obtained from groundwater, which is also fed by Rhine water. The treated wastewater is released back into the Rhine without completely removing residues from medications. We often fail to recognize that rivers are part of a supra-regional metabolic organism. If we apply this idea to the Rhine, it would be a living organism to which the city of Cologne parasitically docks, extracts, pollutes part of the river water, and then incompletely purifies it in an artificial kidney, the sewage treatment plant, and returns it to the river. The climate crisis and the communication about the seriousness of our global situation is rooted in its invisibility and the time difference between cause and effect. Therefore, the photographs document the infrastructure that’s needed for the water supply and waste water discharge of my home town Cologne while the literary texts function as an amplification of the photographs. In these very personal texts I reflect on how we often understand cities as opposed to nature. The interplay between photography and literature is an exploration of the medium and tries to highlight what photography is able to show - and what not.