Steidl Mat Hennek: Silent Cities

Silent Cities presents Mat Hennek’s portraits of some of the world’s great cities―from New York, Los Angeles and London, to Tokyo, Munich and Abu Dhabi―yet all curiously lacking people. Conceived and constructed by man as vessels for human activity, these metropolises are transformed by Hennek into monuments of silence: empty, some-times eerie sites for rituals of work and recreation that are yet to take place. Whether the shimmering windows of a Dallas office building, a lush Hong Kong garden of palms, blooms and fountains, the famed pastel terraced facades of Monaco, or rows of trolleys outside the concrete bulk of Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, Hennek’s pictures demonstrate a consistent formal rigor and recast familiar environments as new sources for focus and reflection. His photographs [...] collect so many elements that they have the power of mandalas, representing the universe in a fragment, and provoking a state of pure contemplation: in the simple experience of gazing, everything becomes pure. Laureline Amanieux