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Norma

by Roger Eberhard

Photographs: Roger Eberhard

Text: Stefanie Gerke

Publisher: Peperoni Books

88 pages

Pictures: 34 colour illustrations

Year: 2013

ISBN: 78-3-941825-47-5

Price: 36 €

Comments: 22,5 x 28,5 cm; German and English; Softcover with dust jacket; 140 cm Leporello included

34 pictures of houses and trees. The houses are standing clean and intact in the dim evening light directly on the roadside. The trees look healthy with their green crowns in bright sunlight against a pale blue sky. However, something is wrong here, but what?

Stefanie Gerke reveals it in her essay, that she wrote for the book.

›There is no longer anyone living in the houses on Hasselwerder Straße in Neuenfelde. That is due, strictly speaking, to the geographical location. The street is only a few hundred meters south of the new starting and landing runways of the German headquarters of the firm Airbus. In 2004, Airbus went public with its plans for the extension of the airfield for what is currently the world’s largest passenger airplane, the A380. The mega-liner … was meant to start and land directly over the Hasselwerder Straße. The Hamburg Senate feared lawsuits from the house owners due to the noise pollution and prevented this by simply buying up sixty-seven homes in the approach path. The inhabitants moved out with their belongings; only the shells of the houses remained.‹

Since 10 years, the Senate maintains the artificial idyll, which also includes the trees, planted on the embankment than, ›in order to counteract the departure of the other residents and the downfall of the entire town‹.

With 34 pictures of trees and houses Roger Eberhard created a great book that forces a reflection on the eerie emptiness and discomfort behind the facade. The excellent design by Alexandra Bruns, the special binding and a 140 cm long leporello furthermore make the book a bibliophilic gem.

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