Walking Distance

Five continents, three decades: with Walking Distance, Olaf Unverzart presents his interpretation of a travel diary. Beyond tourist attractions, well-known places with supposedly typical folklore, his volume of photography opens our eyes to the things and creatures in between – this in between mainly takes place on the street. The power of the images lies in the stillness and intimacy of the scenes. Unverzart’s photographs do not have a voyeuristic feel; they do not pretend to uncover essential insights and truths about places or their people, but appear as fleeting impressions. The individual photographs with their black-and-white composition and grainy texture have a strange quality that seems removed from time and place, lending them an almost universal character. Unverzart explores the most diverse types of transition: we see cars, rails and streets as well as passers-by and pedestrians. Scenes of the old-fashioned and the obsolete point to the photographer’s search for a lost era and repeatedly allude to the extreme cultural, social and technological changes of the last three decades. Text in English and German.