Ephemeral

A series of temporary photographic installations in Cologne — staging non-places as defined by Marc Augé: transit zones, construction sites, and peripheral spaces that exist outside of memory and identity.

In his essay Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity (1992), Marc Augé describes spaces that cannot be defined as relational, historical, or concerned with identity — underpasses, ring roads, metro stations, construction hoardings. Ephemeral works directly within this condition. The photographs were taken in Cologne in 2014, at sites slated for demolition or transformation: temporary by nature, already half-absent from the city's memory. Rather than documenting these spaces neutrally, Schmitt intervened within them — placing printed photographic elements, geometric constructions, and cut-out forms as site-specific installations before re-photographing the result. The installations themselves lasted only as long as the shoot. What remains is the photograph: the trace of an ephemeral gesture within an ephemeral place.