‚Die Guerilla ist da‘
Article in: ‚Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung‘, 09.04.2010/Nr.82, Author Niklas Maak

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‚Glaubenssache - Kirchen zu Moscheen: Fotografien von Johanna Diehl in der Galerie Tolksdorf‘
Article in: ‚Der Tagesspiegel‘, 03.04.2010, Author Simone Reber

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‚New Life Painted on the Ruins‘
Article in: ‚Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung‘, 25.10.2009/Nr.43, Author Niklas Maak

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The dividing line that splits Cyprus since 1974 is both political, as well as religious: The south is Christian Orthodox, the north is Muslim. Photographer Johanna Diehl shows the ruins of abandoned places of worship on both sides of the divide. They recount the drama of a country. By Niklas Maak

History has left behind ruins on both sides. In 1974, the president of Cyprus was overthrown in a coup supported by the Greek junta; then came the pogroms against the Muslim population, whereupon Turkey occupied the Northern part of the island. What followed was a dramatic exodus in both directions; the story of which is still evident in places of worship on both sides. In the south stand abandoned mosques, gaps in the architectural story of the republic. In the Turkish occupied North, many of the abandoned churches underwent different treatment: many were transformed into mosques.

Johanna Diehl, one of the most interesting photographers of her generation, has recorded these emptied, idle or transformed places of worship on both sides. The formal rigor of her photos are only at first sight reminiscent of the Becher school; their specific quality lies precisely in their narrative details and the divergence from typification. Graffiti sprayed over an iconostasis; all images removed from another. Elsewhere churches are covered in carpets; lines drawn with crepe tape point in the direction of Mecca and the prayer niche, the mihrab is simply painted on the wall. In these inscriptions and superscriptions of architecture, the complex political history of the country reveals itself in a surprisingly haunting way. As in Johanna Diehl’s previous work about Odessa, her almost surreally precise eye for minimal formal details – the pattern on a shirt, the tape on the floor – has succeeded in shedding light on the individual, as well as collective fate of human beings. The fact that these people are rarely visible in the images reinforces the effect of the projection, like in a Hitchcock movie. An effect also evident in Diehl’s previous series “Frozen Spaces”, in which she documented the rooms of the deceased and other places that have been preserved unchanged, where the rooms gradually transform from the stages housing everyday life into monuments of absent existence.

(Until November 7th at the Atelierfrankfurt. The series will be shown in the Gallery Fiebach&Minninger, which represents Diehl, in Cologne from January 2010.)

‚Reading History into the Spaces‘
Article in: ‚journal Frankfurt‘, 22/2009, Author Grit Weber

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Since 2008, Johanna Diehl has repeatedly traveled to Cyprus and transported her large format camera to small villages either in the Turkish north or in the Greek southern part of the island. There she sets up her equipment in former churches or mosques and photographs with long exposures and minimal aperture. The pictures tell the story of the wounds that the places have received since the ethnic cleansings of the 1970’s. They are scenes of abandoned Orthodox churches into which prayer niches and minbar have been built in since the expulsion of the Greek population. Carpets with ornamental decorations point to Mecca. Or images of abandoned mosques in the south of the island. The walls were whitewashed just shortly before the photographer’s arrival; but piles of pigeon droppings still lie on the bare floors. Sacred spaces, no matter in honor of what God, are always highly symbolic. History is full of destroyed, mutilated or simply reappropriated spaces. But Diehl’s photographs not only add another layer of images to these histories, they also tell the tale of how tentative such endeavors are. (...). >> Wisdom is transcultural, timeless and learnable: for example in this show.

('Displace', Exhibition, Ffm: Atelierfrankfurt, Hohenstaufenstraße 13-5, until Nov 7)

Walk-In Memories
Article in: 'ZEIT CAMPUS 3/2007', Author Malin Schulz


For her diploma project ‘Frozen Spaces’, Johanna Diehl has gone in search of traces of life in abandoned apartments.

What remains of me, when I am no longer here? The bed, in which I slept? The shirt that I wore? The opened page of my favorite book? When someone leaves home or dies, the room in which he lived becomes a silent witness of his history. Spaces, in which time seems to stand still. A dress still hanging, where it was hung years ago. An imprint on a pillow, a fold in the carpet that no one straightens. It seems as if the dead or the departed continue to exist, if only in the way the porcelain figurines are arranged or how the blanket on the bed is turned up. We approach these places with respect and awe. Opening the cabinet, regarding an object that the deceased last touched. As if someone is still there.
Photographer Johanna Diehl has gone after this feeling with the camera and photographed such long since abandoned spaces. She traveled to fourteen places across Germany, asked for keys to empty houses and apartments, tiptoed across creaking floorboards and opened doors that had been locked since years. “Of course that was pretty creepy sometimes. Once I was in a cellar and turned on the light, when suddenly the radio began to play loud music”, she recalls. “Later I found out that the owner had connected the light switch with the radio.” Some of the former inhabitants had passed away, some simply moved away. Some rooms were still looked after by those remaining behind, who kept their spouse’s room exactly the way it was on the day of their death. Johanna Diehl calls these places “frozen spaces”. They are walk-in memories.

“I began taking photographs of the abandoned rooms in my grandmother’s house”, says the photographer. “It was like a jump backward in time. The room my father lived in as a child, my grandfather’s old office. Everything was exactly like in those days when I was a child. Now nobody is there anymore, and yet I still felt a strange presence. This feeling fascinated me.” With the help of friends and family she began to look for uninhabited houses and apartments. Johanna Diehl doesn’t focus on documenting the fate of the former residents, concentrating instead on the atmosphere of evanescence. And that is why she does not reveal any details about her pictures – the spaces, furniture and objects should tell their own story.

For her photographs, Johanna Diehl changed nothing, not a single piece of furniture was moved for compositional reasons. This allows each room to retain its uniqueness, it special atmosphere. “As soon as you change something, the feeling is lost. You can see it, for example, in museums, where possessions of deceased are also exhibited,” says the photographer. “But you can no longer feel their former owners.” It almost seems as if Johanna Diehl’s photos aren’t images of rooms, but portraits of the people, who lived there. “Although I was no longer as afraid as time went by,” she says. “The feeling of respect and awe never went away.”