Architecture nominee

Hassan J. Richter sees himself very strongly as a monumental documentalist of deindustrialization and its consequences for this field. He traces the wounds and changes and metaphorically brings this punctual, local historical experience to a general level of human interaction with successes and crises, ups and downs, values and superficialities of human existence.
For Hassan J. Richter, the theme of "decay" is at the centre of his artistic work. Decay stands symbolically for the problematic way modern humankind deals with its own history and documents on the one hand, today's fast pace and its transience as well as displacement processes, i.e. human unwillingness to create and preserve a differentiated picture of history. On the other hand the places, that Hassan J. Richter visits, tell -in their decay- of the people who once filled these places with life, of the habits and customs, of joy and suffering that shaped the places before their decay. And exactly this shaping is still reflected in the decay and is filled with the magical brilliance of times long past. With his photography, the artist succeeds in capturing this magic of the past in unique snapshots and presenting it in an artistically appealing way.

Hassan J. Richter was born in Arnstadt/Thüringen on 20th March 1969. After his Abitur, he became a road and traffic technology specialist, but he continuously also worked as a photographer. Since 2007, he has only been working as an artist photographer.
Hassan J. Richter strongly considers himself as a documentalist of deindustrialisation of the consequences and changing for this region. He traces its wounds and changes, and lifts the experiences of this local history metaphorically onto a higher level of human handling of successes and crises, ups and downs, values and superficialities of human existence.
Hassan J. Richter focuses on the topic of “decay and decline”. Decay is an image for the questionable way of how our modern society deals with its own history: It gives evidence of the fast- moving nature of today, its brittleness and the suppression processes, i.e. of the human unwillingness to establish and preserve a fair and critical view on history.
The places of decay, which Hassan J. Richter visits, tell stories of men that used to fill them with life, of habits and customs, of happiness and suffering, which used to shape the character of these places before their decline. The character is still