Architecture of waiting

Architecture of Waiting
Photographs by Ursula Schulz-Dornburg

The photo-collection of bizarre bus stops that Düsseldorf-based photographer Ursula Schulz-Dornburg brought back with her from her trips to Armenia in the years between 1997 and 2001 possesses an enigmatic power far exceeding its time and place of origin. The Museum Ludwig in Cologne has now acquired this series.



They are pictures of a rather unusual sad beauty and a comic element which is difficult to categorize. If you were to see one of these bus stops on its own, perhaps you would laugh at it as if you might laugh at a cartoon; taken as a whole, however, they have a certain metaphorical touch of existential loneliness. Schulz-Dornburg has managed – with composed conciseness – to capture on film these bus stops in austere black-and-white photographs. She puts her trust in the meaningfulness of this Architecture of waiting and her photos are left totally to the interpretation of the attentive observer.
All the structures that she captures on film are completely out of proportion. Practicality never plays a role and material is always squandered in abundance. It is as if there had never been any shortage of building materials and no door had been barred to the imaginativeness of those architects who designed them. So as to fill the emptiness with monuments for the waiting strangers, the architects’ work was carried out not with standardized economy versions but with neither expense nor effort being spared.

Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Bushaltestelle, Armenien: Erewan-Yegnward, 1997

Ursula Schulz-Dornburg, Bushaltestelle, Armenien: Echiniadzin-Erivan, 2002