Cities, like dreams, are made of desires and fears. Italo Calvino writes: “You take delight not in a city’s seven or seventy wonders, but in an answer it gives to a question of yours”. The city may look sad one day and happy the next one. It depends on our mood and reflection.
Like in a dream, in my work I explore my personal longing for stillness and silence. In “The Invisible City”, a project where an eerie mood settled into my images, I found that an underlying mystery was being revealed, both unsettling and very peaceful.
“The Invisible City” is like a dream arising from the heart of the beautiful and most important aspects of our cities, even though it is becoming increasingly difficult to live in cities. It seems that we are approaching a period of crisis in urban life.
Extraordinary architects have shaped our cities. Their monuments serve as evidence for the dignity of humanity and the cultural status of their times. To me they are also about memory and identity.
I dream of a house which once made me very happy, a palace in which I discovered a treasure, a tower I visited with someone I love, another one which reminds me of the Tower of Babel. Sometimes, in my dream, I reunite my favorite monuments of very different places in the world, in an imaginary city.
It makes me feel at home.
Irene Küng