Erbgericht
Erbgericht reimagines the historic inn in Eastern Germany, transforming its layered spaces and history into a striking exploration of memory, change, and utopian possibility. Using a special analog flash setup, colorful shadows create abstract, painterly forms that dissolve familiar architecture into new perspectives.
The book reflects this experimental vision through double-sided, rotated pages, multi-exposure photograms, and tactile, seven-color printing, while accompanying texts situate the work within the transformations and ruptures of post-Wende East Germany. A fragmentary, immersive experience emerges, where history, memory, and imagination converge.
22.7 × 29.8 cm, 128 pages, 114 illustrations
Texts by Eric Meier and Cora Waschke,
and a conversation by Jeannette Brabenetz with Andrea Grützner
German / English
Concept: Johanna Flöter, Andrea Grützner
Design: Johanna Flöter, Hamburg
Paperback with flaps, open-thread binding, and accompanying text
booklet; UV printed PVC dust jacket
Printed by DZA (Germany) in CMYK+3 extra colors
Funded by: ArsVersa Art Foundation, Cultural Foundation of the Free State of Saxony, Robert Morat Gallery, Schierke Seinecke Gallery. Thank you!
Published by hartmann books in Autumn 2024
ISBN 978-3-96070-113-2
Reviews
Erbgericht by Loring Knoblauch:
“Can a photographic genre have an “opposite”? In both concept and execution, I think the answer can surprisingly be yes, as seen in photographic landscapes that intentionally make it hard for us to see the land or photographic portraits that frustrate our ability to engage with the sitters. Andrea Grützner’s photobook Erbgericht offers another thought-provoking example of this kind of deliberate inversion, in architectural photographs that visually disorient the built space they ostensibly document.”
Eine Form der Raumverdichtung by Peter Truschner
“Es geht ihr dabei ganz und gar nicht um eine faktenbasierte und in dem Sinn möglichst wirklichkeitsgetreue Rekonstruktion der Vergangenheit. Mit einem enormen theoretischen und fotografischen Aufwand schafft sie – ein Fest fürs empfängliche Auge.”