HomePhotographyAbandoned Places Photographer Christian Richter Exposes the Loneliest Places in Europe While growing up in the old German Democratic Republic (East Germany), right after the reunification to Germany, Christian Richter the old buildings he found in his homeland. At the start, he did this without a camera, but as soon as a friend gave him a small digital camera, he began with capturing his new love: old, abandoned buildings. Most of the buildings Christian photographed were empty and destroyed, but he managed to bring forward the romantic and beautiful side of them too. Among many other buildings, the series contains photos of empty churches, theatres, dentist practises and homes. He tells us that it can be quite difficult to find those beautiful places; he had to visit many in order to find the best ones. I fell in love with old architecture. The patterns and textures remind me of how everything is impermanent. We asked him some more about his work: The Plus: Are all the rooms in Germany? Christian Richter: I don’t share where the places exactly are to protect them. A lot of these places are destructed after they got public on the web. TP: How much editing do you do in the postproduction? CR: I take these pictures with a 5d mk2 and a wide-angle lens 16-35 L mm. Mostly 5 frames to put together an HDR (High Dynamic Range, ed.) image. After this, I mostly process them with Lightroom and edit them a little bit with Photoshop. TP: What are you working on now? CR: This is an ongoing project and besides I am now travelling through Europe in order to find abandoned staircases.
