Hans Georg Esch

From September 19 to December 13, 2024, the Italian Cultural Institute Cologne is presenting the extraordinary exhibition "The Architectural View I - Pompeii" by the internationally renowned architectural photographer Hans Georg Esch. In this extensive and fascinating exhibition, the HGEsch team, together with the photographer, presents almost 60 fascinating new perspectives on the more than 2500-year-old Roman city in the Naples metropolitan region, which was destroyed by the devastating eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD.

Pompeii has actually been "photographed". But Hans Georg Esch not only relies on his specific "architectural view", but also uses the latest photo technology, including drone shots, to open up new perspectives in the settlement excavated by archaeologists at the foot of Vesuvius. The architectural photographer brings the motifs from Pompeii to Cologne like precious relics, where his images unfold a meaning that goes far beyond their purely documentary function. They develop an exaggerated effect and gain a new depth as photographs with immersive content.

Esch's innovative photographs make it possible to see the former ancient Roman city in a new way and also to recognize connections between Roman city planning and the urban structures of modern metropolises. His photographs show Pompeii not only as a historical site, but as a living part of today's urban landscape. The extraordinary cartographic views open up previously unseen dimensions and reveal unexpected connections that allow insightful comparisons to be drawn between antiquity and the present. The exhibition invites visitors to experience the lost world of Pompeii through the eyes of a contemporary witness and to discover the fascinating parallels to urban planning in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

If the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD had not buried the city - an event that Goethe described as a "joyful disaster" for posterity - Pompeii would perhaps today resemble one of the many small towns in southern Italy in which the spirit of the ancient city only occasionally shines through. Cologne also contains many hidden places from antiquity, and in some places remains from the Roman-Germanic period can still be found today. While in Pompeii, on the Gulf of Naples, what was built over by the modern city in Cologne has been uncovered, much remains on the Rhine remain invisible. In the exhibition, Hans Georg Esch takes the viewers of his pictures into the imagery of his architectural vision. A 360° panorama, installed as a rotunda, shows today's Pompeii - the Parco Archeologico as part of today's agglomeration - built on Cologne's Neumarkt from September 14 to 28, 2024, as an urban part of the Naples metropolitan region.

With Hans Georg Esch's exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute in Cologne and his rotunda on the Neumarkt, a series of presentations of his Pompeii photos is starting in Cologne, which will be followed by an exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of the Roman-Germanic Museum and a cooperation with the Cologne Trade Fair and Art Cologne towards the end of the year. The rotunda will move from the Neumarkt to the square in front of the main entrance to the Cologne Trade Fair.

Opening: 18.9.2024, 7 p.m.
In the presence of the photographer Hans Georg Esch
Speaker: Raimund Stecker