Making strange in urban landscape photography: the work of Steffi Klenz and Thomas Weinberger

This paper discusses the work of artists Steffi Klenz (b. 1979) and Thomas Weinberger (b. 1964), who share a sustained interest in 'making strange‘ as a device for bringing to visibility the processes that shape our environment. Klenz and Weinberger are among a younger generation of photographers who, across considerable variety of subject matter and technique, have been challenging the categories of 'urban‘ and 'landscape‘ and investing in processes of ambiguation through their work, offering an open space for the viewer‘s own projection and engagement. Quite distinct in their specific focus and technique, Klenz and Weinberger turn away from urban life as action, in order to meditate on the spaces where it unfolds. Their work shows complex modes of construction, appropriation and destruction of contemporary urban landscapes and their representations. The work of the two artists will be discussed alongside ideas of the homely and the strange as devices of re-cognition, and will be situated in the context of contemporary photographic practice that rethinks the way we look at our environment.