"Airport- Business- Park" (2007)

There are cities and there is rural country – and there are places that can’t decide. If you travel 10 minutes with the S-Bahn train in Cologne you reach one of these “non-places“. Station Frankfurter Straße: Here you enter the barren steppe, enclosed within autobahn junctions and therefore as a natural living space practically useless.

The area was once named “Airport-Business-Park” and freight companies and office blocks set up camp here. A bizarre picture was created: scrubby grass areas house cubically shaped container buildings, cars park in the middle of nowhere in front of gigantic rubble heaps, huge signs announce future building projects, and in the middle of it all nature is re-conquering dried up industrial docks.

Sibylle Mall dedicated a series of photos to this place where no one likes to linger. With her photographical perspective she has brought a type of order to the topographical chaos. Which makes it even clearer: here is a place that contradicts itself.