Andreas Muller-Pohle: The Danube River Project

Born in 1951, Berlin based Andreas Muller-Pohele has been through various photographic incarnations before, in the 1990s embracing digital technology.  Latest work features water in his Danube River Project and Hong Kong Waters.  It is his work on the Danube that interests me, partly because I can find in it inspiration for my work on the River Witham, but also because, despite never having seen it, I feel an affinity for it having read the books of Patrick Leigh Fermor and Nick Hunt who have walked most of its length.  The work of Andreas Muller-Pohle increases that affinity.  Unlike my work on the Witham, he has taken his images of the Danube itself and surroundings, from the river looking out.  On Andreas's website, photographic essayist Ulf Erdman Ziegler reminds us that the Danube is unique in Europe in that it runs from west to east, the final 2000km of its 2860km length flowing through former communist bloc countries.  Sadly, both Ziegler and Hunt tell us that, as the river travels east, so the poverty increases.  Patrick Leigh Fermor travelled through what he portrayed as an idyllic world back in 1934/5, but his books, written from his diaries in the 1980s point out that, that world was about to undergo tragic changes through the second world war and communist rule.  It is only now emerging from that tragedy and Leigh Fermor's world is gone for ever.  I was very interested to note that Muller-Pohle did not just rely on his experience and his photographs to describe the river, he took water samples at strategic points along its course and had them analysed and these readings are part of his images, giving a much clearer picture of the river.  The readings demonstrate a sinister aspect, though, with serious pollution evident right from its source in Swabia.  It is a completely different river to the 1934 one of Leigh Fermor, as there are now a succession of hydroelectric dams along its length, totally altering its character, much I suppose as canalization did to the lower Witham from the 1700s.

I was fascinated by these images.  They tell the story of the river from a totally different perspective.  Ziegler tells us that the chronology of the course of the river illustrates the rapid changes that have been made to its natural, technical and cultural form.  I like to think that in a similar way my images of the Witham also illustrate how it changes through its, much shorter, length.

So far, I have not taken the plunge and immersed myself in the Witham, and perhaps the coming winter is not the time to do it.  I do, however, have plans to invest in some waders and a waterproof case for my compact to try for a different perspective on my river.

Erdmann Ziegler, U. (2006) The Danube River Project 2005/2006 [online] Andreas Muller-Pohle website. Available from: http://www.muellerpohle.net/projects.html [Accessed 26.10.15]