The world’s architecture provides his inspiration: Hans Georg Esch (b. 1964) has been working for around 40 years both as a commissioned photographer and as an independent artist. The Museum of Applied Arts (MAKK) is exhibiting a comprehensive selection of his work from 11 June to 27 September. On display are large-format masterpieces and serialised photo series that explore the global phenomenon of architecture and its contemporary relevance across different eras. “The built world is my source of inspiration. I photograph the artefacts of our culture. My images show the world built by architects, as it appears to me.” Hans Georg Esch *The Architectural Gaze · Epochal – Global* is the most comprehensive museum exhibition to date by Hans Georg Esch, an architectural photographer based in Blankenberg, Hennef, and active worldwide. Curated by Raimund Stecker, the exhibition at the MAKK Museum of Applied Arts in Cologne is designed as a dialogue. “Architectural parallels in the motifs enter into a fascinating dialogue within the exhibition,” says Hans Georg Esch. “Cologne Cathedral, for example, echoes the Chrysler Building in New York, whilst archaic mud-brick buildings in Yemen echo blocks of flats in China’s megacities.” On the one hand, the exhibition spans the ages, moving between images of the more than 2,000-year-old architecture and urban structures of Pompeii and the forms of the Stuttgart 21 railway station, which is still under construction. But it also spans the globe from Lapland to Sydney or Beijing, with Cologne, the Rhine-Ruhr region and Germany as a whole remaining at the centre. Yet this exhibition initiates a dialogue not only between eras and continents. It also reconciles the tension between commissioned documentary work and free artistic photography.

Following ‘Hans Georg Esch · The Architectural Gaze I · Pompeii’ (2024) and ‘Hans Georg Esch · The Architectural Gaze II · Böhm in Böhm’ (2025), the current exhibition is the third project exploring the photographer’s ‘architectural gaze’. It demonstrates once again how his deep empathy with the respective architectural and urban contexts gives rise to images that transcend the typically documentary nature of architectural photography through his subjectively focused eye. Buildings, design details, urban architectural spaces and panoramas are transformed by Esch’s personal ‘architectural gaze’ into iconic motifs, regardless of their cultural and geographical context. The famous Pop Art thesis – that it is the photograph itself that determines our image of the object – is thus confirmed all too clearly by Esch’s photographs: architecture is designed and built; icons are created. “My aim is always to create images that have never been seen before,” says Hans Georg Esch. “I’m not interested in the purely factual documentation of buildings. With my architectural eye, I want to surprise – not just the architects as the designers, but every viewer.” Analogue Polaroids from Hans Georg Esch’s travels around the world are also part of the exhibition. Today, in an age of infinite reproduction, they are, as it were, the last unique photographic pieces. In contrast, the very latest drone photographs – for example, from Pompeii or of the newly illuminated Cologne Cathedral – represent milestones in this contemporary technology of almost subversive observation. “The drone has become an indispensable tool in architectural photography,” says Hans Georg Esch. “It serves, so to speak, as an aerial tripod and enables perspectives that were once the preserve of birds.” The drone supports the artist in his quest to capture previously unseen subjects. “For example, we photographed the deserted city of Pompeii from the air, thereby revealing the urban structure in a completely new light.” Whether an analogue Polaroid or a digital photograph, whether a small 30 x 33 cm format or an eight-metre-wide panoramic image, whether a black-and-white print or a colour print: What all 130 or so exhibits in the show have in common is their powerful visual impact, which captivates the viewer.

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