'Making Strange': The Photography of Steffi Klenz and Thomas Weinberger

This paper discusses the work of the contemporary German-born artists Steffi Klenz and Thomas Weinberger, who share an interest in 'making strange' as a device for bringing to visibility the processes that shape our environment. Klenz and Weinberger belong to a generation of young photographers who, across a consider- able variety of subject matter and technique, have been challenging the categories of 'urban' and 'landscape'; they have also been investing in processes of ambiguation through their work, offering an open space for the viewer's own projection and engagement. Quite distinct in 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 is discussed alongside ideas of the homely and the strange as devices of re- cognition, and is situated in the context of contemporary photographic practice that rethinks ways in which we look at our environment. Keywords: Steffi Klenz (b. 1979), Thomas Weinberger (b. 1964), displacement, environment, estrangement, landscape, modernity, shock, temporality, topographic, unhomely, urban