Wayfarer through Transylvania

More than a decade after Bilder einer Reise, this new volume of photographs from Transylvania is published. These images are meant to convey the curiosity, the surprise and the emotions I felt during my travels to these churches and fortress churches in Transylvania, my former home. The selection of images makes this book different from the previous one. For one thing, it contains photos that often document unusual spaces and spatial fragments,
which have thus far not been in the focus of the many photographers. With a sculptor's eye I try to capture the many themes and situations that helped me connect to old and contemporary art but also to cinematic scenes and historical novels. All the while, I worked solely with the natural light available to me. But my intention was also to factually docu-
ment the conditions of Transylvanian church substance and the enormously complex issues surrounding their past, present and future.
Peter Jacobi

Peter Jacobi's meandering oeuvre is defined and borne by his work with remembrance, for remembrance. Conveying the past and its explosive nature with respect to the present is something that is always shaped by culture. And what we refer to as cultural memory is, above all, a memory of images. Art is a social organ of remembrance. In a myriad of leaps and bounds, Jacobi deals with history that is both foreign and, because it is his own, familiar to him. The fact that he does not do this by simply resorting to the possibilities of illustration, i.e. an one-dimensional narrative, is an essential feature of his work.
Dorothée Bauerle - Willert