[Winter 2023]

Daniel Hausmann, Backstage among the Urban Ruins
By Mona Hakim

[Excerpt]

I first encountered the work of the photographer Daniel Hausmann several years ago, during a visit to his studio, which had been opened to a group of guests. His urban images were unique – at once baroque, dark, and striking. Abandoned lots and dilapidated, disused buildings, ghost-like figures wandering through rubble-strewn ground between graffiti-spattered walls – this is where Hausmann, who has been active since the 1990s but whose atypical work is not well enough known, goes to play. He investigates urban territories where unhoused people emerge from the shadows, bit players brought into the light in the midst of hidden vestiges scattered throughout the city. These black-and-white photographs, cut up and assembled, situated at the intersection of documentary, theatre, and performance, summon vertigo and reveal the great vulnerability of the subjects they show.

[ Complete issue, in print and digital version, available here: Ciel variable 122 – NIGHT ROUNDS ]
[ Complete article, in digital version, available here: Daniel Hausmann, Backstage among the Urban Ruins — Mona Hakim ]