Palast der Republik2009
Between 2006 and 2009 Gerrit Engel documented the demolition of the most prestigious building of the GDR as the only photographer on site. In this project the focus is placed entirely on the building and its disappearance. Engel immerges in the gutted structure, circles it, steps back, looks out onto the city from its interior, until there is nothing left and the memory replaces actual perception.
Berlin2009
Second typology of urban architecture. The discription of a city through a photographic collection of its buildings.
Permanence2007
Mans desire to create lasting things and thus overcome his own mortality is manifested most evidently in architecture. The series „Permanence” reflects the pursuit of permanence and its inevitable failure.
Manhattan NEW YORK2006
It took ten years to finish this typology of New York architecture. A collection of typical buildings of the city, that allows a coherent understanding and comparability.
Herbarium2001
A photographical collection of brushwork, trees, flowers and leaves, which has developed incidentally from 1996 - 2001. This Herbarium provides a vivid differentiation between nature and technology, between that, which has grown organically and that, which has been planned, between free growth and the defined cut. It illustrates the dialectics between „techne” and „physis”.
Gartenreich2000
Three iluminated cubes with mounted translucent big prints show the remarkable industrial and cultural landscape of the east german region Dessau/Wörlitz. This work was commissioned for the World Fair EXPO 2000.
Marzahn1999
An examination of the largest East-German prefabricated housing estate ten years after the fall of The Wall. The account of the transit of a society by means of pictures of its structures, buildings, inhabitants and surroundings.
Buffalo Grain Elevators1997
The Buffalo Grain Elevators belong to a number of industrial buildings, which, at the beginning of the twentieth century, fascinated and inspired Europe’s architectural and artist avant-garde. Portrays of „architectural individuals” that shaped the Century of Modernism, and which in turn were shaped themselves by it.