April 6, 2010
Stefan Canham's photographic work focuses on the usage of urban space, in particular on marginalized communities and forms of self-housing. He says about his Bauwagen: Mobile Squatters project:
In the 1980s people began to use “Bauwagen” (trailers originally produced to accommodate workers on building sites), circus wagons, lorries and busses to occupy quite often potentially valuable but disused plots of inner city land. Today there are around one hundred “Bauwagen”-sites in German towns and cities, from Flensburg up on the Danish border down to Tuebingen and Munich. There may be as many as ten thousand people living in “Bauwagen”...Bauwagen” are alien elements wedged into the city’s structure, improvised out of rundown vehicles, wooden beams and beautiful window-frames scavenged from demolished buildings, metal sheeting, styrofoam, tar, and just plain debris. Since they lack cellar and attic, the outside is used as storage space.
Canham’s photographs of interiors are clearly meant to show how homely these trailers can be.
Stefan Canham, Berlin, 2004, from Bauwagen series
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